H  E/1VE 


LC7  U !  5   ZJNTEKM E.YE K 


HEAVENS 


HEAVENS 


By 

LOUIS 
UNTERMEYER 

Author  of  "  The  New  Adam,"    "Including  Horace," 
"Challenge,"  etc. 


WITH  A  COVER  DESIGN  AND  FRONTISPIECE 
BY  C.  BERTRAM  HARTMAN 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1922,    BY 
HARCOURT,    BRACE    AND   COMPANY,   INC. 


PRINTED   IN   THC   U.  S.  A.  BY 

THE    QUINN    A    BODEN    COMPANY 

RAHWAY.    N.    J. 


Putting  up  his  blunted  lance  and  deserting,  for  all  time, 

the  ensanguined  lists  of  Parody,  the  author  dedicates  these 

feints  and  skirmishes  in  that  field  to 

JAMES     BRANCH     CABELL 

HENRY  LOUIS  MENCKEN 

CARL  SANDBURG 

AMY  LOWELL 

ET  AL. 

With  the  comforting  assurance  that  to  the  victims  belong 
the  spoils. 


The  first  part  of  Heavens,  with  the  exception  of  the  chap 
ter,  "The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs,"  which  has  never 
appeared  in  print,  was  published  originally  in  Broom.  For 
permission  to  reprint  it  in  this  amended  form,  my  thanks 
are  herewith  presented  to  Messrs.  Alfred  Kreymborg  and 
Harold  A.  Loeb. 

The  five  previews  and  other  parodies  first  basked  in  the 
glare  of  publicity  in  The  New  Republic,  Broom,  Vanity  Fair 
and  The  Literary  Review.  The  author  bows  his  acknowl 
edgments  to  the  editors  of  these  publications. 


CONTENTS 

HEAVENS  PAGE 

The  Prolog  .........  3 

THE  HEAVEN  OF  QUEER  STARS  .....  7 

First  Intermission       .       .    - i? 

THE  HEAVEN  OF  THE  TIME-MACHINE      .       .       .  19 

Second  Intermission    .       .       .               .        .        .  29 

THE  HEAVEN  OF  LOST  MEMOIRS       .       .       .       .  31 

Third  Intermission      ...        .        .        .        •  45 

THE  HEAVEN  ABOVE  STORYSENDE      ...       .       .  49 

Fourth  Intermission    .       .       .       .       .       •        •  61 

THE  HEAVEN  OF  MEAN  STREETS       ....  63 

FIVE  PREVIEWS 

A  Note  on  Previewing       .    ~  ,      ..       .       .       .  85 

WOODROVIAN  POETRY  .       .       .               .       .       .  87 

THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  VERSE  .       .       .       .       .  97 

THE  LOWEST  FORM  OF  WIT      ,       .       .       .       .  107 

VERSED  AID  TO  THE  INJURED    .       .       .       .       .  113 

RHYME  AND  RELATIVITY    .       *       .       ,       .       .  121 
Edw-n  Arlin-ton  Robins-n      ...       .       .125 

C-rl  Sandb-rg  .        .        .       .       .       .       .       .  126 


Contents 

PAGE 

Rob-rt  Fr-st     .       .. .128 

Vach-1  Lin-say  .       .       .       .       ....  129 

Edw-n  Markh-m      .        .        .        ....  132 

Edg-r  L-e  Mast-rs  .        .        .       .       .        .        .  133 

Ed-a  St.  Vinc-nt  Mill-y  .        ...      .        .        .  135 

Amy  Low-11      .                .        ...        .        .  136 

"H.  D."     .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .  -  •  ,  139 

Conr-d  Aik-n    .        .       .-      .....  x   .  141 

Maxw-11  Bod-nheim         ...        .        .        <  142 

Alfr-d  Kr-ymborg    .        ...        .     v.        .  143 

Ezr-  Po-nd       .       .       .  *    .       „       .       .     .  .  145 

T.   S.   Eli-t      .       .       .       .       .  .     .       ,       .  147 

S-ra  Teasd-le    .                                      .    ^ .  -    .  148 

Lou-s  Unterm-yer    .       .       .       .       .       .       ,.  149 

Rob-rt  W.  Serv-ce  .        .....      ..  150 

INDEX  OF  VICTIMS 153 


HEAVENS 


The  Prolog 

"So  this,"  I  exclaimed  with  a  ghostly  facetiousness, 
"is  Heaven!" 

It  was  a  vague,  sprawling  region  with  no  definition 
of  any  sort.  The  place  was  soundless,  lifeless,  mo 
tionless,  save  for  the  continual  rising  and  falling  of 
gauzy  curtains  of  clouds.  Except  for  a  pale,  gray 
light,  wanly  diffused,  there  was  not  a  trace  of  color. 

"No,"  said  my  guide,  "you  are  now  in  The  Limbo 
of  Infinity,  a  vast  stretch  that  some  of  our  younger 
members  have  rechristened  The  Neutral  Zone.  It  is 
a  kind  of  ante-chamber  in  which  the  guest  is  left  to 
decide  where  he  will  go." 

"But  I  have  decided,"  I  replied,  with  anxious  haste, 
"I  want  to  go  to  Heaven." 

"Which  one?"  he  asked. 

"Which  one?  Why — er — are  there  more  than  one?" 
I  gasped. 

"There  are,"  he  replied,  "if  the  last  census  can  be 
relied  upon,  exactly  nine  hundred  and  seventy-six  of 
them,  not  including  the  three  score  or  so  of  Secession 
ist,  Extremist,  Intimate,  Neighborhood,  Revolutionary, 
Village  and  Little  Heavens  that  have  clustered  around 

3 


4  Heavens 

the  main  structures.  The  principal  divisions  date  back 
to  antiquity;  the  Movement  for  Separate  Incorpora 
tion  came  in  1935  and  was  caused,  first  of  all,  by  the 
astonishing  series  of  reports  by  the  Committee  on  Con 
gested  Districts.  As  every  one  is  aware,  even  the  In 
finite  Void  became  crowded  after  the  conversion  of  the 
Martians  and  Lunarians  to  your  remarkable  earthly 
standards." 

I  gulped,  "But  must  I  choose?  All  I  want  is  a  com 
fortable  cloud,  a  small  harp  and  a  neat,  not  too  close- 
fitting  halo." 

"I  am  sorry,  but  that  is  the  rule,"  he  assured  me. 
"Besides,  the  accessories  you  mention  have  been  dis 
continued.  The  Hygienic  and  Sanitary  Cordon  has 
prohibited  the  use  of  halos;  the  Cumulus  Division  of 
the  Efficiency  Board  has  taken  over  the  control  of 
clouds  which  were  condemned  as  a  menace  to  the  Pub 
lic  Highways,  and  the  Musicians'  Union,  Ethereal 
Local,  number  X3,  has  passed  a  by-law  limiting  the 
use  of  harps  to  holders  of  uncancelled  cards." 

"But—" 

"On  the  other  hand,"  he  continued,  "you  should  have 
no  difficulty  in  selecting  an  appropriate  sphere.  What 
were  you  before  you  came  here?" 

"A  crit — a  book-reviewer,"  I  blushed. 

"Ah,"  he  beamed,  "a  lover  of  literature!" 

"A  book-reviewer,"  I  insisted. 


The  Prolog  5 

"Well,"  he  went  on,  unheeding,  "your  place  is  obvi 
ously  in  a  branch  of  the  Literary  Heavens — just  which 
one  I  cannot  say.  Have  you  any  favorite  god?" 

"None  in  particular.  That  is,  not  now.  I  used  to 
worship  my  lost  preferences  and  prejudices." 

"You  will  regain  them,"  he  chuckled.  "  'Gone  but 
not  forgotten'  is  true  of  characteristics  that  are  not 
mentioned  on  tomb-stones.  One  of  the  delightful  sur 
prises  awaiting  the  dear  departed  is  to  see  his  most 
cherished  convictions  in  cap-and-bells  attending  the 
coronation  of  his  pet  aversion.  But  I  digress." 

"Don't  apologize,"  I  hastened  to  add.  "Digression 
is  an  art,  not  an  accident.  You  were  saying — " 

"I  was  saying  that  a  corner  in  one  of  the  Literary 
Realms  should  suit  you  admirably.  Which  would  you 
prefer — the  H.  G.  Wells  Heaven,  the  Vers  Libre 
Heaven,  the  George  Moore  Heaven,  the  G.  K.  Chester 
ton  Heaven,  the  Robert  W.  Chambers  Heaven,  the 
Freudian  Heaven,  the — " 

"Heavens!"  I  exclaimed,  not  irreverently.  "I  could 
never  decide  offhand.  Would  it  not  be  possible  for  me 
to  try  them  first?  Not  all  of  them,  of  course — just 
three  or  four  of  the  more  popular  ones — or  possibly 
a  meagre  half-dozen?" 

"I  don't  know,"  he  said  dubiously.  "It  isn't  done 
and  it's  not  quite  regular.  Still,  there's  no  particular 
law  against  it.  On  the  other  hand — " 


6  Heavens 

"Be  human,"  I  urged  the  angelic  creature.  "A  day 
in  each  would  do — a  few  hours — even  a  glimpse." 

"Well,"  he  temporized,  "the  windows  are  tall  but 
not  so  high.  If  you  could  get  a  foothold  on  the  sills, 
you  could  see  and  hear.  They  found  it  futile  to  shut 
the  windows  or  draw  the  shades  after  the  subconscious 
was  discovered.  You  must  be  prepared  for  anything, 
I  warn  you.  If  you  still  have  the  curiosity  and  cour 
age,  I  will  lead  you.  Come." 

I  followed. 


THE  HEAVEN  OF  QUEER  STARS 

THE  darkness  was  slashed  with  two  intersecting  bars 
of  silver  that  split  the  sky.  They  lay  on  the  monstrous 
clouds  like  two  swords  still  shining  with  the  faith  of 
those  who  had  swung  them.  They  made,  according 
to  the  view  of  the  beholder,  the  pattern  of  some  stu 
pendous  hieroglyphic  which  man  must  either  decipher 
or  die,  or  the  still  simpler  pattern  which  men  have 
died  to  decipher,  the  pattern  of  a  cross.  Although  the 
design  did  not  change,  the  play  of  light  was  constantly 
shifting;  the  two  blades  of  brilliance  flashed,  burned 
and  coruscated  with  colors  that  were  as  glittering  and 
strange  as  a  futurist  poem  or  sunrise  in  the  wrong  quar 
ter  of  the  sky.  It  was  a  wild  and  spectacular  radi 
ance,  so  dazzling  that  the  sparkle  of  the  stars  was 
wasted  and  every  sun  that  flamed  seemed  a  prodigal 
sun.  One  could  perceive  nothing  else.  One  was,  how 
ever,  aware  of  a  vast  undercurrent  of  gaiety,  a  bright 
violence,  that  swept  through  space  with  the  magnifi 
cent  gusto  of  a  March  wind.  It  was  as  though  some 
gigantic  virtuoso  were  improvising  vast  runs  and  ter 
rific  chords  of  mirth  on  an  elemental  orchestra  of  light, 
wood,  winds  and  water.  It  rocked  with  a  benign  and 


8  Heavens 

boisterous  vigor;  an  upheaval  that  was  fervently  hu 
morous  and  furiously  holy. 


('7  can't  make  head  or  tail  of  this.  It's  all  so  bril 
liantly  confusing"  I  complained  to  my  guide.  "My 
head  is  spinning — upside  down." 

"That's  the  effect  the  Chesterton  Heaven  has  on 
every  one  at  first"  he  assured  me.  "Wait  a  few  mo 
ments;  the  dazzle  will  wear  off  and  you'll  notice  many 
things  as  familiar  as  they  are  astonishing.  See — the 
air  is  beginning  to  clear") 

A  more  diffused  but  no  less  vivid  light  spread  itself 
over  the  sky.  It  picked  out  curious  corners  and 
kindled  them  till  they  shone  like  candled  niches;  it 
burned  the  gray  fields  of  space  till  they  roared  like  a 
battlefield;  it  tipped  the  crests  of  sleeping  clouds  till 
they  woke  and  shook  their  gilded  plumes,  like  knights 
roused  by  the  clashing  of  steel.  The  accolade  of  sun 
light  fell  impartially  on  endless  spires,  titanic  peaks, 
sacred  pinnacles  and  a  few  thousand  spirits  who  had 
nothing  in  common  but  their  uncommon  size.  There 
was  not  one  figure  in  the  crowds  that  was  not  six  feet 
high  and  at  least  four  feet  wide.  They  were  gargan 
tuan,  globular,  glorious.  And,  what  is  more,  they  were 
galumphing.  They  were,  it  became  increasingly  evi 
dent,  the  source  and  center  of  the  mad  gaiety  that  im- 


The  Heaven  of  Queer  Stars  9 

pelled  their  universe.  Every  one  seemed  bent  on  per 
forming  some  athleticism  more  acrobatic  than  his  fel 
low.  Some  were  skipping  on  and  off  incredibly  high 
walls,  some  were  savagely  demolishing  figures  of  straw, 
some  were  sliding  down  two-mile  banisters,  some 
springing  up  fan-like  and  fantastic  trees,  while  others 
were  continually  erecting  ridiculous  obstacles  over 
which  they  would  immediately  bound  like  joyful  and 
gigantic  footballs.  Still  others,  dressed  like  mystical 
Punchinellos,  were  playing  leap-frog  among  the 
stars. 

In  this  excited  universe  there  were  only  two  figures 
that  remained  without  motion.  These  two,  as  though 
carved  in  Gothic  stone,  were  seated  on  a  low  emi 
nence  the  very  position  of  which  was  as  contradictory 
as  the  two  who  occupied  it.  One  of  this  queer  couple 
was  a  round,  red-faced,  blinking  individual  who  might 
have  been  either  a  butcher  or  a  priest.  The  other  had 
the  indubitable  figure  of  a  Greek  poet  and  the  face  of 
a  dubious  Greek  god;  his  features  were  almost  perr 
feet  except  for  a  particularly  long  and  peculiarly  cleft 
chin.  There  was  nothing  angelic  about  him  and  yet 
he  bore  the  unmistakable  traces  of  one  who  had  once 
been  one  of  God's  chief  angels. 

"You  are  wrong  again,"  he  was  saying.  "There  is 
no  divinity  in  peace.  There  can  be  no  such  thing  as 
a  divine  content.  Discontent  is  the  power  that  drives 


io  Heavens 

the  worlds.  The  angry  waters  send  storming  regi 
ments  upon  the  earth — and  new  life  appears.  The 
placid  waters  collect  scum  on  a  stagnant  lake — and 
spread  death  on  everything  they  touch.  Men  do  not 
know  where  their  deliverance  lies  nor  who  is  their  true 
deliverer.  They  grope — " 

"Sometimes  they  hold  things  beyond  their  grasp," 
mildly  interpolated  the  rubicund  one. 

"They  grope,"  continued  his  companion,  "in  a  dark 
ness  that  is  no  less  dark  for  being  electric;  a  darkness 
compared  to  which  the  so-called  Dark  Ages  were,  if  I 
may  be  permitted  the  metaphor,  a  succession  of  brief 
but  blinding  shooting-stars.  Wild  deeds  and  wilder 
thoughts  may  have  reddened  many  a  sanguine  day; 
but  if  the  years  shone  like  short-lived  and  sinister 
suns,  at  least  they  shone." 

"If  you  will  pardon  a — " 

"The  blacksmith,"  he  went  on,  unheeding,  "in  those 
days  had  a  position  as  dignified  as  the  songsmith;  the 
armor  he  fashioned  protected  men  by  covering  their 
bodies.  To-day  the  same  iron  destroys  them  since  it 
has  entered  their  souls.  Hospitality  was  once  some 
thing  more  than  a  weak  invitation  for  a  week-end.  One 
could  be  sure  of  cakes  and  ale  at  every  door-step  and 
every  house  was  a  public-house.  People  as  well  as 
periods  have  changed.  They  have  turned  with  a  dis 
heartening  docility,  from  the  time-spirit  to  The  Times." 


The  Heaven  of  Queer  Stars  II 

"If  you  will  pardon  me,  they  have  done  nothing  so 
radical,'7  objected  the  simpler  person,  "they  have 
merely  substituted  the  middle  classes  for  the  Middle 
Ages." 

"They  have  done  something  far  worse.  They  have 
learned  to  worship  only  the  middles;  either  extreme  is 
too  much  for  them.  And  so  they  have  become  the 
creatures  of  their  own  creation.  It  used  to  be  con 
sidered  cheap,  for  instance,  to  own  slaves.  They  have 
advanced  economically;  they  find  it  cheaper  to  be 
slaves.  ...  In  nothing  is  their  slavery  so  apparent  as 
in  the  fetters  they  place  upon  themselves.  No  longer 
do  they  cry  out  'These  bonds  are  unworthy  of  us.' 
They  ask,  in  an  excess  of  humility,  'Are  we  worthy  of 
our  chains?'  No  matter  how  they  are  held  up  they 
refuse  to  be  cast  down.  If  any  of  them  bear  a  cross, 
they  insist  that  they  are  carrying  on  a  new  kind  of 
physical  culture. 

"And  thus,  a  lethargic  content,  a  monstrous  satis 
faction  has  begun  to  sap  their  blood.  It  has  crept, 
like  some  unnameable  horror,  into  their  minds;  it  lays 
its  bloated  hands  upon  the  gyrations  of  the  sun  and 
twines  its  clammy  fingers  around  the  unconscious  cen 
turies.  Dissatisfaction  is  their  only  remedy,  their  most 
potent  saviour.  Revolt  is  the  heritage  of  a  bountiful 
energy;  it  is  only  the  lack  of  it  which  is  revolting.  I 
am  glad  to  feel  that  the  iconoclastic  impulse  is  grow- 


12  Heavens 

ing  stronger.  I  am  happy  when  I  observe  that  every 
dawn  is  a  novel  and  more  startling  experiment  of  that 
discontented  spirit  which  we  call  Nature.  It  cheers 
me  to  know  that  every  time  the  earth  revolves  upon 
its  axis  we  have  actually  accomplished,  with  a  quiet 
but  terrible  insurgence,  a  daily  revolution." 

"You  are  such  an  eloquent  talker/'  said  the  other,  a 
bit  wistfully,  athat  I  am  sure  you  are  wrong.  The 
surprising  beauty  about  the  stars  and  these  heavens 
is  not  the  fact  that  they  are  novel  but  that  they  are, 
what  is  even  more  surprising,  very  old.  A  novel  thing 
is  the  least  enduring  thing  in  the  world — even  to  the 
novelist.  It  is  only  something  that  is  quite  common  or 
really  old,  like  country  wine  or  the  belief  in  immor 
tality,  that  is  forever  freshening  and  new.  It  is  only 
the  bright  sins  and  black  virtues  celebrated  by  minor 
poets  that  deny  the  miracles  of  existence." 

"And  I  deny  them  also,"  rejoined  the  saturnine  being 
whose  chin  had  somehow  elongated  into  a  pointed  tuft 
of  beard,  "the  best  thing  about  miracles  is  that  they 
cannot  possibly  happen." 

"The  best  and  strangest  thing  about  miracles," 
quietly  replied  the  combination  that  was  part  Santa 
Claus  and  part  Father  Brown,  "is  that  they  are  al 
ways  happening.  A  decadent  playwright  actually  does 
lead  an  army  that  conquers  a  city.  Steel  leaps  through 
the  water  and  floats  in  the  air.  A  man  in  London 


The  Heaven   of  Queer  Stars  13 

talks  to  a  woman  in  Chicago  without  raising  his  voice. 
A  fanatic  in  a  corner  of  Europe  precipitates  a  world- 
war  with  a  bomb,  and  a  college  president  on  the  other 
side  of  the  ocean  stops  it  with  a  phrase.  You  see,  the 
whole  trouble  with  ordinary  living  is  that  it  is  such  an 
extraordinary  and  wild  succession  of  impossibilities;  a 
kaleidoscope  of  staggering  surprises  so  continuous  that, 
in  the  vulgar  but  vivid  idiom  of  the  American,  Dr. 
Harvey  W.  Fletcher,  life  is  just  one  darn  miracle  after 
another.  Look!" 

It  was  an  exclamation  so  sharp  that  the  voice  was 
curiously  flat.  A  concourse  of  stars  had  gathered  while 
the  two  had  been  debating  and  were  scattering  largesses 
of  light.  During  the  last  sentences  the  spheres  had 
grown  larger  and  more  animated;  their  half-discernible 
faces  shone  with  a  brilliance  that  was  better  than  good 
news  told  by  a  pessimist.  They  clustered  about  a 
radiant  giant  who  held  up  his  hand  like  a  quivering 
baton.  As  it  descended,  he  began  to  beat  the  time  for 
a  lunging  measure  and  tremendous  voices  swept  the 
sky. 

"The  stars  are  singing!"  cried  the  defender  of  mira 
cles,  "the  morning  stars  led  by  St.  Rabelais!" 

"And  what  are  they  singing?"  mocked  the  diabolic 
debater,  "The  Paradoxology?" 

"Listen!"  commanded  the  other. 

And  this,  to  a  tune  where  planets  set  the  tempo, 


14  Heavens 

where  moons  were  quarter  tones  and  in  which  comets 
were  grace-notes,  were  the  words  of  the  song: 

The  lanes  that  run  through  the  Sussex  downs 

Are  spiced  with  a  savory  salt, 
And  the  crooked  streets  of  Wessex  towns 

Are  fruity  with  hops  and  malt; 
They've  kegs  of  ale  and  rum  for  sale 

In  fields  where  the  Ule  slips  by ; 
And  the  roads  that  run  through  barleycorn 

Will  lead  you  straight  to  Rye. 

The  path  dividing  Kensal  Green 

Is  sharp  as  a  Christian  sword; 
It  cuts  through  poisonous  alleys  clean 

To  the  heart  of  the  dark  East  ward. 
Its  lamps  are  stars  where  the  scimitars 

And  the  moons  of  the  Orient  toss, 
And  you  turn  from  the  Golden  Crescent 

To  come  to  St.  George's  Cross. 

The  ocean's  path  is  a  rolling  track 

Where  the  shark  can  enjoy  his  feast; 
The  jungle's  maze  is  cruel  and  black 

With  gods  more  brute  than  a  beast. 
But  England  lies  where  the  holy  skies 

Are  warmer  than  wine  or  home — 
And  the  roads  that  run  to  the  ends  of  the  earth 

Will  lead  you  safe  to  Rome. 

"A  very  pretty  catch,"  sneered  the  spirit  of  nega 
tion,  "very  romantic  and  very  ridiculous." 


The  Heaven  of  Queer  Stars  15 

"Perhaps,"  answered  his  opponent,  more  mildly  than 
ever,  "and  yet  the  quality  of  ridicule  is  greater  than 
you  may  imagine.     Birth  is  a  sublime  adventure  in 
the  ridiculous.    And  what  is  death  but  a  heroic  re 
turn;  a  transposition,  I  might  say,  from  the  ridiculous 
to  the  sublime!     It  is  only  the  fool  that  fears  being 
thought   foolish    for   trumpeting   trivialities.     Trifles, 
after  all,  are  tremendous  simply  because  they  are  too 
obvious  to  be  noticed  by  anybody  but  detectives  and 
poets.    It  is  not  the  fool  who  discovers  the  common 
place  for  us;  it  is  the  poet  who  startles  us  with  his  own 
rapturous  amazement  upon  discovering  that  the  sky  is 
still  blue  and  that  grass  is  even  greener  than  the  most 
modern  nude  by  Matisse.    It  is  not  the  fool  fearing 
ridicule,  but  the  brave  man  who  can  face  an  audience 
with  nothing  more  startling  than  the  news  that  God's 
in  His  Heaven,  that  death  ends  all  our  troubles  and 
that  a  penny  saved  is  a  penny  earned.    It  requires  no 
hardihood  to  utter  a  glittering  and  anarchic  sophistry. 
There  is  only  one  thing  that  takes  all  a  man's  courage 
to  maintain — and  that  is  a  platitude.    Here,  thank 
the  God  of  the  Perfect  Paradox,  you  will  find  only 
those  daring  champions  who  have  never  faltered  in 
their  allegiance  to  the  obvious.    Here  are  those  who 
have  devoted  their  energies  to  a  celebration  of  the  bold 
precision  with  which  Spring  follows  Winter,  who  have 


1 6  Heavens 

given  their  lives  to  prove  the  theory  that  two  and  two 
actually  are  four!" 

"I  can't  stand  this!"  screamed  his  saturnine  oppo 
nent.  "Talk — talk — talk!  I  can't  get  a  word  in  edge 
ways.  Even  Goethe  gave  me  a  better  opportunity. 
It  isn't  fair — it  isn't — and  I'll  be  roasted  in  my  own 
fires  if  I  stay  here  to  make  a  Roman  Catholic  holi 
day.  I'm  going!" 

There  was  a  spurt  of  flame  and  he  vanished.  Noth 
ing  remained  of  him  but  a  slight  smell  of  brimstone 
and  a  sulphur-yellow  blot  on  the  porphyry  bench.  The 
skies  were  darkened  for  a  moment  as  though  a  pointed 
shadow  had  fallen  over  them;  a  wailing  cry  rose  from 
the  gutters  and  ended  among  the  stars. 

"Too  bad,"  sighed  the  benign  dialectician,  "I  think 
I  almost  convinced  him." 


First  Intermission 

"Now's  your  chance/7  whispered  my  guide.  "His 
back  is  turned  and  you  could  slip  in  here  for  a  while. 
Shall  I  help  you  through?" 

"No,  thanks,"  I  said,  "I'm  not  as  keen  for  the  Ches 
terton  Heaven  as  I  thought  I  was.  I'm  only  a  mild 
agnostic  and  I  could  never  be  happy  in  an  atmosphere 
where,  in  order  to  outdo  the  other  heretics,  I  would 
have  to  embrace  the  last  of  all  heresies — Orthodoxy. 
I  admit  the  undeniable  exhilaration  gained  by  walking 
on  one's  head,  but  one  can  overdo  this  cerebral  pedes- 
trianism.  And  in  such  a  position  there  is  always  the 
possibility  not  only  of  talking  through  one's  hat  but 
the  graver  danger  of  thinking  through  one's  shoes." 

"You  seem  to  be  trying  already,"  returned  my 
seraphic  director  with  a  quizzical  smile. 

"Heaven — any  other  heaven — forbid!"  I  expostu 
lated.  "I  am  far  too  dizzy  to  attempt  any  such  ma 
neuvers.  Frankly,  that  atmosphere  was  worse  than 
intoxicating.  What  I  wanted  was  a  stimulus.  Instead 
of  which,  you  gave  me  a  stimulant.  I  need  a  sedative, 
one  that  is  a  corrective  rather  than  a  Chestertonic. 
Couldn't  you  let  me  sample  something  on  that  order?" 

17 


1 8  Heavens 

"Are  you  weary  of  the  mind  so  soon?"  inquired  the 
angel. 

"No/'  I  replied.  "But,  having  just  witnessed  it  at 
play,  I  would  prefer  to  watch  the  mind  at  work. 
Couldn't  you  show  me  something  more  orderly  and  so 
cially  serious?  Something  less  scintillating  and  more 
static;  something  controlled  not  so  much  by  rhetoric 
as  by  reason?" 

"Very  well,"  he  acquiesced,  "I'll  take  you  to  the  most 
scientific  and  rational  Heaven  we've  ever  had.  Come 
along." 

I  came. 


THE  HEAVEN  OF  THE  TIME-MACHINE 

§i 

You  must  imagine  a  vast  laboratory — a  tremendous 
affair  of  several  thousand  miles — stretching  its  spot 
less  length  of  Albalune  (a  by-product  of  moon-dust 
that  had  superseded  all  wood-work  and  tilings  since 
2058),  reflecting  only  the  purest  of  celestial  colors. 
An  intricate  network  of  rapidly  moving  runways 
spanned  the  stars;  myriads  of  spinning  platforms 
threaded  the  upper  reaches  which  were  reserved  for 
aerocars  travelling  at  speeds  of  three  hundred  miles 
an  hour  and  upward.  The  introduction  of  a  dozen 
new  metals  in  1970 — especially  Maximite,  Kruppium 
and  Luxpar,  to  name  the  three  chief  members  of  the 
important  Iridio-Aluminoid  family — had  revolutionized 
aerial  traffic  and  when  a  half  century  later  the  full 
power  of  atomic  energy  was  released  and  exploited, 
land  travel  ceased  entirely.  The  whirling  streets 
flashed  by  in  a  maelstrom  of  sound.  Huge  trumpets, 
grotesquely  curved  to  resemble  calla  lilies,  blared 
eternity's  oldest  ethics  and  its  newest  advertisements 
with  an  impartial  clamour.  "Harrumph!  Harrumph! 
Baroom!  Look  slippy!  All  the  latest  styles  in  latter- 

19 


ao  Heavens 

day  creeds!  Special  Bargains  To-Day  in  Neo-Pa- 
ganism!  Large  Assortment!  Baroom!  Ham's  Halos 
for  Happiness !  Ask  Adam — He  Knows !  Harrumph ! 
Harrumph!" 

§2 

Down  one  of  these  runways,  seated  on  a  machine 
not  unlike  a  twentieth  century  bicycle  but  far  more 
delicate  and  equipped  with  dozens  of  sensitive  an 
tennae,  advanced  a  figure.  You  had  to  look  twice  at 
his  fantastic  costume  to  assure  yourself  that  this  was 
a  man.  You  figure  him  a  sallow,  plumpish  person,  a 
little  over  middle  size  and  age,  bespectacled,  and  with 
a  thinning  of  the  hair  on  his  dolicocephalic  head — a 
baldness,  if  one  examined  closely,  that  might  have  been 
covered  by  a  shilling.  His  clothes,  conforming  to  the 
ethereal  fashion,  were  loosely  draped  rather  than 
tubular;  woven  of  some  bright  semi-pneumatic  mate 
rial,  ingeniously  inflated  to  suggest  a  sturdiness  not 
naturally  his.  All  vestiges  of  facial  hair  had  been  ex 
tracted  by  a  capillotomist  in  his  youth  and  a  neat  head 
dress,  not  unlike  a  Phrygian  liberty  cap,  was  fastened 
to  his  scalp  by  means  of  suction.  You  must  picture 
him  borne  down  one  of  these  ribbons  of  traffic,  past  the 
harr  and  boom  of  the  Blare  Machines,  to  a  quiet  curve 
(corners  and  all  dust-collecting  angles  had  long  since 
vanished  from  architecture)  half-screened  off  by  a 


The  Heaven  of  the   Time-Machine       21 

translucent  substance  resembling  milky  glass.  ...  In 
the  centre  of  this  chamber,  on  a  pedestal  of  weights 
and  measures,  stood  a  crystal  ball  that  seemed  to  have 
a  luminous  quality  of  its  own.  Clouds,  colours,  half- 
defined  shapes  writhed  within  it;  a  faint  humming 
seemed  to  emanate  from  its  now  sparkling,  now  nebu 
lous  core.  Fastening  three  of  the  web-like  filaments 
of  the  machine  to  the  globe,  he  pressed  a  series  of  studs 
along  what  seemed  to  be  the  crank-shaft,  spun  the 
sphere  with  a  gyroscopic  motion  and  brought  it  grad 
ually  to  where  a  violet  ray  pierced  the  ramparts.  The 
light  within  the  crystal  ball  grew  brighter.  It  turned 
orange,  then  flame-colour,  then  prismatic  in  its  fire, 
exhausting  the  spectrum  until  it  assumed  an  unwaver 
ing  brilliance.  This  play  of  colours  was  reflected  in 
the  features  of  the  crystal-gazer.  His  expression,  al 
most  kaleidoscopic  in  its  changes,  was,  in  quick  suc 
cession,  imaginative,  philosophic,  extravagant,  meta 
physical,  romantic,  quizzical,  analytic,  middle-class, 
historical,  prophetic. 

("Who  is  it?"  I  whispered  in  an  awe-struck  under 
tone  to  my  super-terrestrial  companion.  "Am  I  ac 
tually  gazing  on  God,  the  Invisible  King?" 

"Scarcely"  replied  the  unabashed  angel.  "Those 
•varying  features  belong  to  a  more  local  divinity:  Wells, 
the  Divisible  God." 


22  Heavens 

"But  look — "  I  exclaimed,  "he  is  drawing  nearer. 
.  .  .  He  is  stopping  immediately  beneath  us.  .  .  .  We 
can  even  see  what  is  happening  inside  the  crystal.  .  .  . 
Look—") 

§5  .      ;    ,   , 

It  is  very  hard  to  tell  precisely  what  period  was 
registering  itself  in  the  heart  of  that  amazing  crystal. 
One  saw  walls  quite  plainly,  a  table  with  shaded  lamp, 
books,  chairs.  From  the  conversation  between  the  two 
men — they  were  both  in  their  aggressive  thirties — the 
place  seemed  to  be  England  some  time  in  the  Nineteen 
Twenties.  The  older  one,  whose  name  was  something 
incongruously  like  Fulpper,  had  a  trick  of  waving  his 
arms  whenever  words  failed  him,  finishing  his  expan 
sive  sentences  with  a  rush  of  onomatopoetic  sound. 

"We  can't  wait  for  wisdom,  Balsmeer,"  he  was  say 
ing,  "Life  goes  too  damn  fast.  We  start  off  at  a  fair 
pace,  increase  our  speed  a  little,  lag  behind,  try  to 
catch  up  and,  first  thing  you  know — whooosh!  That's 
what  the  whole  business  is:  an  immense  and  hideous 
scramble,  an  irresistible  race  ending  in  heart-break  and 
— whooosh!" 

"But  isn't  there  such  a  thing  as  the  scientinc  tem 
perament;  something  that  is  not  carried  away  so  pas 
sionately?"  inquired  Balsmeer. 

"Meaning—?" 


The  Heaven  of  the  Time-Machine       23 

"Well,"  continued  the  younger  chap,  "I'm  what  you 
might  call  a  serious  sociological  student.  I'm  earnest 
straight  through.  No  humor  to  speak  of.  No  ro 
mance.  I  stumble  over  bright  and  beautiful  things 
.  .  .  missing  most  of  'em,  I  dare  say,  but  getting  on 
fairly  well  without  'em.  I  know  there  are  high  ec 
stasies  in  the  world — splendid  music,  extraordinary 
women,  stupendous  adventures,  great  and  significant 
raptures — but  they  are  just  so  many  abstractions  to  me. 
Scientific  truth  is  the  least  accessible  of  mistresses. 
She  disguises  herself  in  unlovely  trappings;  she  hides 
in  filthy  places;  she  is  cold,  hard,  unresponsive.  But 
she  can  always  be  found!  She  is  the  one  certainty, 
the  one  radiance  I  have  found  in  a  muddle  of  dirt  and 
misery  and  disease." 

"And  don't  you  see,"  pursued  Fulpper  with  exuber 
ant  warmth,  "that  this  same  Science  of  yours  is  the 
very  Romance  you're  running  away  from?  This  whole 
mechanistic  age  with  its  oiled  efficiency,  its  incalculable 
energy  and  speed  and — whizz.  .  .  .  What's  it  all  for, 
anyway?  Just  to  make  traffic  go  quicker?  to  get  the 
whole  mess  revolving  faster?  Not  a  bit  of  it.  Your 
Research  and  my  Romance  are  blood-brothers  or  dual 
personalities,  to  be  more  exact.  ...  I  seem  to  see — 
wait  a  minute — I  seem  to  see  a  time  when  this  Science 
will  be  revealed  not  so  much  as  the  God  from  the  Ma 
chine  as  a  god  within  it.  A  socialized  thing.  A  less- 


24  Heavens 

ener  of  stupid  and  unnecessary  labor.  A  force  to  end 
the  criminal  exploitation  of  man  by  man.  A  power 
to  finish,  once  and  for  all,  the  muddle  and  waste  and 
confusion  that  destroy  the  finest  human  possibilities." 

"Yes,"  Balsmeer  conceded,  "but— " 

"I'm  coming  to  that,"  continued  Fulpper.  "That's 
where  Love  and  Refined  Thinking — grrrr! — meet  as 
enemies.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Grundy  won't  be  able  to  de 
base  the  latter  and  foul  the  former.  Knowledge — a 
full,  frank  knowledge — is  going  to  change  all  that." 

"But  innocence — " 

"It  may  go.  We've  tasted  the  fruit  of  the  tree. 
You  can't  have  your  apple  and  eat  it,  any  more  than 
Adam  could.  But  there's  something  better  than  in 
nocence.  There's  a  fiercer  virginity,  a  more  coura 
geous  and  affirmative  purity  in  wisdom.  No  more 
dark  whisperings.  No  more  poisonous  insinuations, 
nasty  suggestiveness.  No  more  music-hall  smut.  No 
French-farce  allusions.  No  more  smirching  of  im 
pulses  that  are  as  beautiful  as  art  and  as  clean  as  chem 
istry.  No  more  nightmares  of  adolescence.  No  more 
muddling  up  to  sex.  .  .  .  This,  please  my  God  or  your 
Science,  will  cease  to  be  the  world  of  the  bully,  the 
enslaved  woman,  the  frightened  child — the  domain  of 
the  mud-pel ter,  the  hypocrite,  the  professional  diplo 
mat.  It  will  no  longer  be  the  world  of  the  underworld, 
the  cesspool,  the  liver-fluke.  ..." 


The  Heaven  of  the  Time-Machine       25 
His  voice  trailed  off,  incontinently.  .  .  . 

.   ".    •          §4 

The  crystal  became  suddenly  opaque.  For  a  few 
minutes  there  was  absolute  silence.  Then  a  faint  click 
ing  began;  invisible  pistons  tapped  out  a  delicate 
rhythm.  The  tympani  increased  both  in  volume  and 
speed.  A  lever  shot  out  from  the  very  heart  of  the 
mechanism  and  the  dials  of  the  Time  Machine  began 
to  register  new  eras.  The  radiometer  clicked  off 
years,  decades,  centuries,  millennials.  .  .  .  Presently 
the  hands  stopped.  The  diffused  light  within  the  ball 
resolved  itself;  a  gray-blue  mist  lifted  from  a  strange 
landscape  as  the  magnetic  arrow  pointed  to  5,320,506. 

§5 

It  was,  as  I  have  said,  a  strange  landscape.  There 
was  no  color,  no  motion,  not  a  sign  of  vegetation. 
Even  as  the  darkness  disappeared,  the  sun,  a  great 
greenish  disc  half  the  size  of  the  heavens,  sprang  out 
of  the  icy  sea.  The  planets  were  drawing  nearer  to 
gether  for  the  final  debacle.  The  rocks  on  the  shore 
were  covered  with  frozen  rime;  the  shadow  of  Mars, 
a  dark  clinker  as  round  as  the  forgotten  moon,  covered 
the  ground.  It  fell  on  the  faces  of  the  two  who  sat,  as 
if  carved,  at  the  mouth  of  their  subterranean  tun 
nel.  .  .  .  They  were  swathed  in  bands  of  thermic  elec- 


26  Heavens 

trons;  what  showed  of  their  faces  was  bloodless.  Their 
lips  did  not  move — the  organs  of  speech  had  disap 
peared  during  the  second  stage  of  telepathic  communi 
cation — and  only  the  minute  dilations  of  the  pupils 
during  some  emotional  passage,  animated  their  chis 
elled  immobility. 

"The  waste  of  it  ...  the  hideous  waste  of  it,"  you 
figure  him  flashing  this  to  her,  " what's  the  whole  push 
and  struggle  for?  Is  every  generation  to  be  at  the 
beginning  of  new  things,  never  at  a  happy  ending? 
Always  prodded  or  prodding  itself  on  with  dreams,  half- 
perceived  vistas?" 

"My  dear  .  .  ."  her  eyes  remonstrated. 

"It's  you  and  I  against  the  world,"  he  telepathed. 
"I  guess  it's  always  been  that.  Two  alone  against  the 
welter  of  mud  and  ugliness,  dulness,  obstinacy;  two 
tiny  rebels  against  a  world  frozen  with  hate  and  hy 
pocrisy.  .  .  .  The  pity  and  shame  of  it.  ...  The 
shabbiness  of  it  all.  .  .  ." 

"But,  dear,"  she  challenged,  "the  human  race  is  still 
so  young.  It  is  still  learning  to  progress." 

"Progress! "  his  pupils  contracted.  "We  are  as  sunk 
in  apathy  and  ignorance  as  our  mythical  ancestors  in 
the  pre-historic  twentieth  century.  Progress  is  a  shib 
boleth.  It's  worse — a  religion  that  every  one  pro 
fesses  and  nobody  believes  in.  Where  are  we  now? 
Education  has  lost  itself  in  the  schools.  Sex  has  been 


The  Heaven  of  the  Time-Machine       27 

buried  in  lies  and  lingerie.  Science  is  fuddling  over 
its  dead  bones,  trying  to  reconstruct  the  brain-cells 
of  the  Post-Wilsonian  man.  .  .  .  Progress!  .  .  .  Un 
til  this  icy  earth  falls  at  last  into  a  solid  sun,  millions 
of  us  will  come  out  of  our  burrows  to  question  what 
it  all  means.  .  .  .  Here — at  the  very  mouths  of  our 
underground  tunnels — man  once  walked,  warm  and 
careless  and  secure.  And  here,  before  that,  life  ran 
prodigally  on  every  inch  of  the  surface.  .  .  .  Here,  in 
some  obscure  and  forgotten  epoch,  the  long-necked 
Brontosaurus  waded  and  the  Diplodocus  thrashed  his 
thirty-foot  tail  among  the  muggers.  Here  the  giant 
Moa  screamed  as  the  Hesperornis,  that  strange  wing 
less  bird,  pursued  the  fishes  through  the  Mesozoic 
waters.  Here  the  Protohippus  pranced  on  his  three 
toes  and  the  Tyrannosaurus,  buoyed  up  by  fertile  mud, 
preyed  on  the  happy  herbivores.  .  .  .  And  all  for 
what?  .  .  ." 

"For  something  it  will  be  hard  to  answer  but  harder 
to  deny,"  she  communed  intensely,  "for  some  trans 
figuration,  some  sort  of  world  cleansed  of  its  crippling 
jealousies,  its  spites,  its  blunderings.  .  .  .  After  all, 
there  is  a  long  time  ahead.  Man  has  existed  for  little 
more  than  ten  or  twelve  million  years.  We  are  still 
so  new.  .  .  .  The  future  is  so  enormous,  so  stagger 
ing,  so  superb.  Life  is  forever  young  .  .  .  forever 
eager.  .  .  .  Men  will,  in  some  distant  maturity, 


28  Heavens 

adjust  their  scattered  dreams  and  energies.  I  see 
the  time  when  life  will  have  a  unified  meaning, 
when  even  death  will  be  a  part  of  the  great  inte 
gration.  And,  whether  we  die  or  live,  mankind  is  in 
the  making.  .  .  .  Old  worlds  are  being  exchanged 
for  new.  Utopias,  anticipations,  unguessed  brother 
hoods,  the  last  conquest  of  earth  and  the  stars.  .  .  . 
All  so  slowly  but  so  confidently  in  the  making.  .  .  . 


§6 

The  picture  faded  out,  dissolving  imperceptibly,  un 
til  the  ball  paled  to  a  mere  glassy  transparency.  .  .  . 
The  figure  in  the  machine  suddenly  became  energetic. 
He  wheeled  about,  took  his  hands  from  the  controlling 
levers  and  touched  a  series  of  buttons  on  delicate, 
jointed  rods  which  terminated  in  a  set  of  metal  hiero 
glyphs.  First  one  was  struck,  then  another,  then  a 
swift  succession  of  notes.  The  fingers  flew  faster,  as 
though  they  sought  to  wrest  some  harmony  from  the 
heart  of  the  machine.  .  .  .  For  some  time,  nothing  else 
was  heard  but  tap,  click — tap,  tap,  tap — click — tap — 
ping! — as  the  incessant  typewriter  was  driven  on 
through  space. 


Second  Intermission 

"WELL,  what  do  you  say?"  urged  my  guide.  als  it 
to  be  the  Heaven  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells?" 

"No,  no,"  I  shuddered,  "I  could  never  stand  it. 
When  I  was  below,  it  seemed  so  perfect  and  inevitable 
in  print.  But  up  here.  ..."  I  shuddered  again.  "It 
is  all  logical  enough,  I  suppose,  but  even  machinery 
palls  after  the  first  hundred  thousand  years  and  the 
thought  of  colloquies  lasting  through  eternity  with  in 
variable  speculations  upon  the  future  of  a  mechanistic 
society  is  really  too  terrible!" 

He  seemed  to  regard  me  with  an  amusement  in 
which  commendation  and  contempt  were  equally  mixed. 
"What  then,  would  you  prefer?" 

"I  know  I  am  captious  and  ungrateful  and  fickle  and 
all  that,"  I  stammered,  "but,  although  I  am  half 
ashamed  to  admit  it,  I  want  something  less  literal  and 
more  literary;  I  woultl  prefer  to  dwell  in  some  Nirvana 
where  fine  writing  is  fully  as  important  as  fine  think 
ing." 

"Well,"  hazarded  my  interlocutor  with  what  might 
have  been  a  spiritually  suspicious  smile,  "how  literary 
would  you  like  it?" 

29 


30  Heavens 

"The  more  the  merrier,"  I  answered  hastily.  "After 
the  lumbering  generalities  of  the  previous  heaven,  noth 
ing  could  be  too  special  for  me.  All  the  sestheticism 
I  once  had,  demands  expression — mine  or  any  one 
else's.  It  cries  out  for  a  realm  where  every  phase  and 
letter  of  Art  is  capitalized,  where  life  exists  only  as 
material  for  brilliant  table-talk,  where  the  jargon  of 
great  movements  and  rare  names  drowns  the  music  of 
the  spheres,  where  the  dilettante  can  loaf  and  invite  his 
soul-mate,  where  belles  lettres  are  a  religion  and  the 
precieux  is  regnant." 

"Come  with  me,"  said  the  angel  with  an  expression 
that,  in  a  lesser  being,  might  have  been  called  grim. 

"Where  are  you  taking  me?"  I  called. 

"To  the  Heaven  of  George  Moore." 


THE  HEAVEN  OF  LOST  MEMOIRS 

A  WALL  of  almost  infinite  length.  A  wall  with  a 
peculiar  regularity  of  design  interrupting  its  smooth 
ness.  On  closer  inspection,  the  design  was  a  door  or, 
to  be  more  exact,  a  succession  of  doors.  Doors,  an 
infinity  of  them,  with  a  strange  and  extraordinarily 
shining  key-hole.  Bending  down  to  discover  the  cause 
of  this  unusual  brilliance,  my  eye  encountered  another 
eye.  I  passed  to  the  next  key-hole.  Again  an  eye  was 
burning  behind  it.  Another  key-hole;  another  eye. 
The  ocular  adventure  continued  without  change;  not 
an  absence,  not  a  sign  of  disappearance  or  dissent.  The 
eyes  seemed  to  have  it  by  an  infinite  majority.  An 
other  key-hole;  another  glistening  pupil.  Another.  .  .  . 
I  could  stand  it  no  longer. 

Suddenly  I  found  myself  on  the  inside  of  the  doors 
and  George  Moore,  dusting  his  knees,  was  shaking  an 
admonishing  forefinger  at  me. 

"A  vulgar  habit,"  said  he  without  a  trace  of  self- 
consciousness,  "many  of  the  boys  at  Oscott  did  it.  But 
it's  wrong.  It  gives  you  a  squint  and  the  narrowest 
sort  of  vision  of  the  world.  You  really  should  stop 
it,"  he  gravely  concluded. 

31 


32  Heavens 

It  was  a  strange  room  full  of  a  determined  though 
musty  adolescence,  the  room  of  a  man  born  prema 
turely  young.  There  was  no  ceiling.  The  dome  of 
the  sky  served  for  that,  and  it  was  tinted  a  delicate 
mauve.  A  multitude  of  nets  instead  of  rugs  were 
spread  on  the  ambiguous  floor,  nets  woven  of  curious 
stuffs:  a  singer's  corset-lace,  a  forgotten  dream,  a  strand 
of  honey-coloured  hair,  a  phrase  from  Walter  Pater, 
moonlight  on  a  pillow  in  Orelay,  a  scrap  from  the 
Catechism  translated  by  Verlaine,  hopes,  aspirations 
and,  here  and  there,  a  faint,  not  too  secret  shame.  The 
walls  were  a  succession  of  unfamiliar  Monets,  Manets, 
Conders,  Pissaros. 

"Of  course  you  don't  recognize  them,"  Moore  was 
saying.  "These  are  the  things  that  the  Impressionists 
were  going  to  paint  and  never  got  round  to.  Here  I 
can  have  all  the  canvases  they  intended  and  never 
had  time  to  begin.  This,  you  see,  is  Heaven." 

"But—"  I  ventured. 

"I  know  what  you're  going  to  say.  But  that's  be 
cause  you  have  been  glutted  with  the  fat  curves  and 
greasy  mathematics  of  the  Futurists.  If  you  cannot 
admire  this  Pissaro  for  its  magic,  admire  it  for  its 
modern,  yes,  its  ultra-modern  morality.  It  dares  to 
be  candid  and  reticent  and  self-expressed  and  virtuous 
at  the  same  time;  it  dares  you  to  face  yourself,  as 
Degas  undoubtedly  faced  his  canvas,  and  be  ashamed 


The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  33 

of  nothing  but  shame.  What  have  you  to  offer  against 
it?  Matisse?  A  jaundiced  Debussy  who  tries  to 
translate  his  liver-trouble  into  paint.  Seurat?  A  dis 
organized  palette  stricken  with  spotted  fever.  Picasso? 
A  tired  academician  conducting  a  liaison  with  a  Diesel 
engine.  Redon?  A  sentimental  china-painter  spray 
ing  his  colors  with  a  rose-water  mysticism.  Duchamp? 
A  mad  geometrician  trying  to  animate  a  chess-board. 
Bracque?  Gleizes?  Derain?  Dull  arrangements  of 
bourgeois  still-life  in  the  fourth  dimension.  Really, 
your  taste  has  been  debased  by  Whistler  at  the  one 
extreme  and  the  Dadaists  at  the  other.  You  ought  to 
remember  your  Rochefoucauld." 

"But— "  I  protested. 

"Oh,  yes,  your  objection  is  logical  enough.  But 
what  has  that  to  do  with  us  to-day?  There  was  a 
time  when  such  hair-splitting  may  have  carried  weight, 
I  grant  you.  And  your  protestations  are  refreshing 
in  one  so  catholic.  But  Catholicism,  as  I  have  so 
often  pointed  out  in  'Hail  and  Farewell/  is  incapable 
of  producing  great  Art.  The  church  of  Rome,  as  I 
have  so  often  said  to  poor  Edward,  has  never  been  the 
same  since  the  Reformation  and,  mentioning  Newman, 
I  said  it  must  rely  more  and  more  on  conversion  than 
conviction.  What  happened  to  Newman  after  he 
Verted'  is  history.  As  his  churchly  importance  grew, 
he  waxed  more  bathetic;  as  he  became  more  sentimen- 


34  Heavens 

tal,  his  style — if  you  can  call  it  that — became  more 
slipshod  and  actually  sloppy.  The  fact  that  he  wrote 
'The  Apologia'  in  a  hurry  doesn't  excuse  him;  he  was 
always  searching  less  for  some  new  testament  than 
for  an  old  text.  No,  you  must  go  further  than  that, 
I  am  afraid.  And  you'll  have  to  be  less  argumenta 
tive.  Language,  after  all,  is  not  so  much  a  matter  of 
cultivation  as  an  accident  of  geography.  I  remember 
talking  about  this  to  a  fine,  dark-haired  girl,  about 
twenty,  in  Drogheda  one  morning,  a  few  hours  be 
fore  breakfast.  The  effect  of  soil  and  climate  on 
speech,  I  told  her,  was  everywhere  apparent,  even  in 
the  remotest  of  dialects.  The  harsh  winds,  the  thistles, 
the  rock-like  frosts  of  Scotland  are  reflected  in  the  cold 
timbre,  the  sharp  burr  of  those  uncouth  and  granite- 
like  Scotch  tones.  Lonely  versts  and  terrible  winters 
are  in  the  grinding  consonants  of  the  Russians;  the 
rough  inhabitants  of  the  craggy  Caucasus  hurl  huge 
blocks  of  sound  at  each  other  whenever  they  exchange 
the  mildest  greetings.  And  where  else  could  the  sunny, 
liquid  Italian  be  spoken  but  beside  the  golden  lakes 
of  Italy,  or  along  its  lazy,  laughing  roads,  or  in  its  bays 
where  the  sunlight  foams  and  sparkles  like  the  true 
Lachrimae  Christi?  Not  that  I  have  forgotten  our 
own  English  which  still  smacks  of  the  racy  Eliza 
bethans,  in  spite  of  time  and  the  encroachment  of  the 
Latinists.  English,  for  all  our  studios,  is  still  an  out- 


The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  35 

door  language  with  something  of  the  downs  in  its  free 
dom  and  a  tang  of  venison  in  its  rich  and  gamy  ac 
cents.  .  .  .  Rabelais  could  have  written  well  in  that 
tongue  had  he  been  born  in  Yorkshire.  .  .  .  Delacroix 
could  have  painted  in  that  idiom.  ...  I  remember 
telling  all  this  to  the  dark-haired  girl  early  one  morn 
ing  in  Drogheda.  There  was  much  more  in  a  similar 
key  and,  although  I  have  forgotten  a  great  part  of  our 
conversation,  I  remember  my  saying  to  her,  as  the  sun 
was  rising,  'And  do  you  differ  with  me  or  is  it  a  rather 
heavy  assent  you  are  breathing?'  She  said  or  seemed 
to  say  something  equivocal — I  could  not  catch  the 
syllables  as  her  back  was  turned.  I  said,  Tor  Heav 
en's  sake,  have  you  been  asleep  all  the  time  I  was  talk 
ing?'  She  answered,  Tor  Heaven's  sake,  have  you 
been  talking  all  the  time  I  was  asleep?'  She  was  a 
sharp,  intense  creature,  an  artist  in  her  way,  and  I 
remember  that  the  cerise  dawn  suddenly  touched  the 
nape  of  her  little  neck  and  made  me  think  of  Ingres' 
portrait  of  an  unknown  lady,  the  one  surnamed  La 
Belle  Zelie.  .  .  .  But  Ingres  could  never  have  man 
aged  the  peculiarly  Celtic  contradictions  of  color  and 
temperament.  Rubens,  for  all  his  preoccupation  with 
barmaids'  buttocks,  might  have  done  it.  ...  Rubens 
and  Rabelais — how  they  would  have  loved  the  English 
lanes  in  November  when  the  whole  country  has  the 


36  Heavens 

snap  and  vigor  of  fresh  ale.  .  .  .  Dostoevski  would 
never  have  understood  it." 

"But— "  I  interjected. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  went  on  suavely,  "but  you  must 
not  think  I  have  lost  the  thread  of  your  not  altogether 
relevant  remarks.  What  I  have  lost  is  something  more 
important.  The  various  Memoirs  of  My  Dead  Lives 
(there  have  been  at  least  nine  of  them — Yeats,  you 
know,  has  often  spoken  of  my  feline  characteristics), 
the  five  or  six  Hails  and  Farewells,  to  say  nothing  of 
a  dozen  miscellaneous  Recollections,  Confessions  and 
Reminiscences,  all  of  these  have  covered  my  earthly 
experiences  with  even  more  detail  than  veracity.  There 
is  not  an  hour — except  one — which  is  not  enshrined 
like  a  fly  in  the  amber  of  what,  making  whatever  al 
lowances  you  choose  for  auctorial  modesty,  is  a  very 
decent  prose.  But  that  one  missing  hour!  ...  Its 
disappearance  bothered  me  until  I  was  faced  with  the 
choice  of  omitting  it  from  my  Definitive  Autobiog 
raphy  or — hideous  alternative — supplying  it  from  my 
imagination  rather  than  my  memory.  It  was  in  a  train 
going  to  Galway,  I  remember  that.  And  there  must 
have  been  a  great  deal  of  interesting  conversation,  for 
my  first  important  play  had  just  been  accepted  by  the 
Coisde  Gnotha  and  I  was  bubbling  over  with  ideas  for 
its  presentation.  I  thought  of  getting  Craig  to  do  a 
curtain  for  us.  There  was  also  a  bird-call  in  the 


The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  37 

second  act  which  called  for  better  music  than  we  pos 
sessed  and  I  did  not  want  to  depend  on  the  chance 
improvisations  of  some  local,  alcoholic  flute-player.  I 
thought  of  asking  Debussy  to  help  us  out.  A  week 
later,  I  wrote  him  explaining  that  I  wanted  something 
both  spiritual  and  sensual,  a  thrush-like  fragment  for 
the  moment  when  Una,  coming  out  of  her  bath,  first 
sees  Tumaus.  It  was  not  long  before  I  heard  from 
the  composer.  He  wrote: 

"  'Mon  Cher  Moore:  J'ai  regu  votre  lettre  du  7 ,  et 
je  prends  note  de  son  contenu.  Aussitot  que  je  rece- 
vrais  votre  cheque,  je  vous  enverrai  ce  que  vous  de- 
mandez.  J'espere  que  votre  famille  va  bien.  Le 
temps  est  vraiment  trop  chaud  pour  cette  saison.  Sin- 
cerement,  Claude-Achille  Debussy' 

"In  less  than  three  months,  I  received  another  inti 
mate  note,  even  more  brilliant  and  characteristic  of  the 
man,  enclosing  seven  different  themes  to  choose  from. 
But,  as  they  were  scored  for  French  horn  and  con 
trabass  (two  instruments  that  we  did  not  possess), 
none  of  the  phrases  was  ever  performed.  ...  I  recol 
lect  all  this  and  yet  I  cannot  recapture  that  lost  hour. 
...  It  is  a  pity,  for  I  know  that  much  that  must 
have  been  illuminating  and  sprightly  is  lost  to  my 
pages.  It  was,  my  memory  takes  me  that  far,  a  mixed 
crowd  that  listened  to  me.  We  were  going  to  a  Feis 


38  Heavens 

and  I  remember  speaking  of  some  one  as  a  'delayed' 
or  was  it  a  'decayed  pre-Raphaelite'?  But  who?  .  .  . 
And  what  else  did  I  say?  ...  So  I  came  here,  hop 
ing  to  find  my  lost  memory.  It  was  with  a  distinctly 
unpleasant  shock  that  I  learned  this  was  called  The 
Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  because  the  memoirs  actually 
remained  lost.  No  one — not  even  their  authors — 
could  find  them.  Well,  here  I  stay,  waiting  for  my 
strayed  sheep  to  come  home,  wagging  their  tales  be 
hind  them.  ...  It  is  a  stupid  Celtic  idea,  this  dis 
appointing  Heaven.  The  Celt  is  never  witty,  he  is 
only  talkative.  All  the  Celtic  humour  has  come  out  of 
Dorsetshire." 

"But— "  I  expostulated. 

"I  am  coming  to  that,"  continued  Moore  with  im 
perturbable  ease,  "but  you  must  not  hurry  me.  I 
am  feeling  very  piano  this  morning,  very  piano.  There 
were  some  of  your  compatriots  here  yesterday  and  I 
dictated  a  rather  brilliant  interview  to  Miss  Gough 
for  them.  Some  of  the  questions  I  asked  myself  were 
quite  in  my  best  vein.  'Is  it  true,  Mr.  Moore' — (this 
is  one  of  them) — 'that  you  will  give  us  no  more  de 
lightful  records  of  amour,  no  more  brightly  coloured 
experiences  such  as  you  have  so  charmingly  illuminated 
in  your  Euphorion  in  Texas?'  'Alas,'  replied  the  au 
thor  of  some  of  the  most  exquisite  English  of  our  day 
(you  see  I  didn't  dare  trust  the  taste  of  your  gentle- 


The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  39 

man-journalists),  'Alas!  I  am  no  longer  a  practi 
tioner  in  Love,  only  a  consultant'  ...  I  was  rather 
pleased  with  that,  if  I  do  say  so.  Eglinton  would  have 
liked  it.  Poor  John  Eglinton,  who  was  always  re 
ferring  to  what  he  called  my  frigid  heresies  and  my 
frozen  immoralities,  would  have  cherished  the  neat  in 
souciance  of  such  a  self -disposal.  So  different  from 
Yeats,  for  all  their  common  sympathies.  ...  I  can 
see  Yeats  now,  looking  for  all  the  world  like  a  badly- 
drawn,  dilapidated  crane,  his  manuscript-case  flapping 
like  a  black  and  broken  wing.  A  queer  bird,  he  was, 
with  his  beak  continually  dipped  into  a  world  of  half- 
pagan,  half-puritan  miracles — taking  part  in  a  ritual 
where  the  wine  was  always  being  changed  to  water. 
I  liked  his  later  angularities  particularly.  To  what 
instrument  can  I  compare  them?  I  suppose  an  oboe 
is  fairly  accurate — in  my  younger  days,  I  would  have 
summarized  his  writing  in  English  rather  than  in  Gaelic 
by  calling  it  the  music  of  a  Celt  learning  to  play  the 
Anglo-Saxophone — but  an  oboe  lacks  the  uncertain 
spirituality  that  Yeats  communicated.  A  viola  is  more 
like  it  or,  better  still,  a  celesta.  But  his  early  mysti 
cism  never  impressed  me.  'Surely,'  I  said,  'he  must 
see  it  is  absurd.  Can  he  be  serious  about  this  literary 
moonshine  or  is  it  merely  une  blague  qu'on  nous  fait?' 
It  is  the  last  flicker  of  majestic  twilight — a  pitiful 
Gotterdammerung — without  intensity  or  strength. 


40  Heavens 

After  all,  health  is  played  out  in  England.  If  we  want 
vigor  we  find  it,  not  in  the  floundering  language  of 
Hardy  or  the  even  more  puddling  prose  of  Bennett,  but 
in  the  newspapers.  Health,  or  rather  a  sort  of 
trumped-up,  synthetic  substitute  for  it,  is  duly  manu 
factured  only  in  the  heretical  journalism  of  Mr.  Wells 
or  the  journalistic  orthodoxy  of  Mr.  Chesterton.  .  .  . 
Every  fine  perception  of  the  senses  has  been  brutalized 
by  modernity.  How  many  of  our  prima-donnas,  even 
the  leading  seraphs,  can  sing  a  manuscript  a  capella? 
.  .  .  The  piano  has  been  the  death  of  music." 

"But—"  I  demurred. 

"It  was  late  at  night,  one  winter,"  he  continued 
without  noticing  my  interruption,  "when  the  thought 
of  the  end  of  Art  overwhelmed  me.  I  had  been  reading 
Mallarme  in  a  desultory  manner  when,  in  the  midst 
of  rather  a  pompous  passage,  this  sentence  leaped 
at  me:  The  world  was  made  for  nothing  other  than 
to  produce  one  beautiful  book.'  Suddenly  the  impli 
cations  surged  over  me  like  a  succession  of  tidal  waves. 
It  was  a  crystallization  of  my  life,  a  synthesis  of  my 
existence.  I  could  not  go  to  bed  without  telling  my 
discovery;  I  felt  I  would  burst  if  I  did  not  go  out  at 
once  and  collogue  with  some  one.  But  it  was  one 
o'clock  in  the  morning  and  very  few  of  my  friends  are 
to  be  reached  at  that  hour  but  dear  Edward  with  whom 
I  had  had  my  quarterly  quarrel.  Synge,  I  knew,  was 


The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  41 

somewhere  in  the  Aran  Islands  hunting  native  poetry 
in  a  celluloid  collar;  &  was  dreaming  of  his  beloved 
Angus  and  Lir;  Lady  Gregory  was  at  the  other  end 
of  the  city,  coddling  a  coterie  of  fledgling  playwrights 
with  an  air  that  was  a  cross  between  a  mother-hen's 
and  Queen  Victoria's.  But  what  are  the  inconven 
iences  of  time  or  the  non-availability  of  friends  to  one 
with  a  passion  for  literary  conversation!  I  dashed 
out,  buttoning  my  greatcoat,  past  Ely  Place  and  Mer- 
rion  Row,  for  I  knew  there  was  a  coffee-stall  at  the 
corner  of  Clare  Street.  Would  there  be  any  belated 
patrons  there?  My  heart  was  as  faint  as  a  lover's 
until,  through  a  flurry  of  snow,  I  observed  a  police 
man  leaning  heavily  against  the  wooden  stand.  .  .  „ 
In  ten  minutes  I  was  deep  in  a  discussion  of  the  aris 
tocracy  of  Art.  The  true  artist,  I  remember  saying, 
makes  no  concessions;  he  imposes  them.  Gautier 
would  have  understood  me.  Was  it  not  he  who  cham 
pioned  the  decorative  futility  of  effort  when  he  de 
clared  that  nothing  can  be  wholly  beautiful  unless  it 
is  wholly  useless?" 

"But—"  I  persisted. 

"There  is  little  to  be  gained  by  disputing.  You 
must  accept  all  things,  rejoicing  not  only  in  Nature's 
fecundity  but  in  her  contradictions.  She  is  the  source, 
the  origin,  as  I  have  observed  somewhere;  she  is  vul 
gar  but  never  ordinary.  We  have  only  to  listen  to  her 


42  Heavens 

to  learn  originality.  Turgenieff  felt  glimmerLigs  of 
this;  Dickens  never,  Balzac  still  less.  .  .  .  You  re 
member  Doris  of  whom  I  have  written?  I  always 
used  to  wonder  why  her  hair,  especially  when  seen  in 
the  blond  light  at  Plessy,  reminded  me  less  of  the 
golden  fleece  than  of  Schopenhauer.  I  still  wonder 
about  it.  There  was  something  in  the  half-lights  that 
only  Renoir  could  have  evoked  and  a  touch  of  the 
sharp  malevolence  that  is  in  Jeremiah,  the  terrible  dis 
quiet  that  makes  all  of  Hebrew  literature  so  hateful 
a  series  of  fortissimo  passages.  .  .  .  Doris  was  lav 
ish;  she  was  a  prodigal,  like  poetry  or  nature.  She 
was,  I  told  IE,,  who  always  treasured  the  conceit,  like 
a  perfumed  bedroom  trembling  with  silent  music.  .  .  . 
And  yet,  what  is  the  aftermath?  Flaubert  was  right. 
He  said,  'Of  the  pains  most  passionately  felt,  what  re 
mains?  Of  the  woman  most  passionately  loved,  what 
do  we  possess?  An  idea/  How  true  that  is.  It  took 
me  many  years  to  find  what  I  had  been  looking  for. 
'In  literature  one  begins  by  seeking  laboriously  for 
originality  in  other  men's  works;  one  ends  by  discov 
ering  it  in  himself.'  Who  said  that?  It  must  have 
been  one  of  the  Goncourts,  probably  Edmond.  Still, 
there  is  a  turn  about  it  that  suggests  Jules.  It  could 
not  have  been  Banville,  exquisite  though  he  is.  And 
who  could  have  been  the  first  to  declare  that  'History 
is  a  novel  which  never  happened;  a  novel  is  a  history 


The  Heaven  of  Lost  Memoirs  43 

that  might  have  happened?'  The  Goncourts  again. 
But  I  have  done  with  novels.  I  shall  write  nothing 
but  memoirs  here  in  eternity.  The  novel  is  a  dead 
form  that  can  never  be  resurrected.  Only  personal 
ity  and  the  intimacy  of  self-confession  are  worthy  of 
communication.  Like  Baudelaire,  I  write  for  only  ten 
minds.  Like  him,  I  do  not  know  their  owners.  Un 
like  him,  I  do  not  worship  them.  .  .  .  What  more  can 
be  expected?  Even  Victor  Hugo,  a  dull  perception 
as  a  rule,  knew  enough  to  say  that  in  every  century 
not  more  than  three  or  four  men  of  genius  ascend. 
Well,  here  I  am — still  searching  for  that  damnably 
lost  memoir.  .  .  .  You'll  pardon  me,  I  know,  if  I  ex 
cuse  myself  to  continue  the  hunt.  I've  enjoyed  our 
little  dialogue  immensely;  you  are  the  sort  of  gifted 
conversationalist  one  always  relishes.  It  has  all  been 
most  stimulating." 
"But—"  I  exploded. 


Third  Intermission 

"BuT,"  I  exploded,  as  my  angelic  mentor  rejoined 
me,  "but  did  you  ever  hear  such  chatter!  And  he 
calls  it  a  dialogue!  And  I  suppose  he  thinks  that 
mad  hodge-podge  is  a  philosophy!  And  those  conver 
sational  leaps!  He  isn't  an  artist,  he's  a  chamois!" 

"  'Why  so  hot,  little  man?'  "  replied  the  angel  with 
an  exasperating  tolerance.  "This,  as  I  understood 
you,  is  exactly  what  you  asked  for.  Am  I  wrong?" 

"Of  course  not,"  I  said,  half  pettishly,  half  peni 
tently,  "it's  all  my  own  fault.  I  should  have  known 
better.  I'm  frightfully  sorry  to  put  you  to  all  this 
bother  and  I  know  I  don't  deserve  it — but  would  you 
let  me  try  again?" 

"What  shall  it  be  this  time?"  the  spirit  asked  with 
the  resignation  for  which  his  tribe  has  become  famous. 

"I  don't  know  exactly,"  I  replied.  "Have  you,  per 
haps,  a  heaven  or  two  that  is  not  so  special,  one  that 
is  neither  mechanistically  nor  artistically  technical? 
Could  you  not  let  me  see  something  utterly  unrelated 
to  reality,  something  that  might  have  been  conceived 
in  a  golden  age  or  an  ivory  tower;  something  that  has 
the  hues  of  life  but  is  far  more  colorful,  more  poetically 

45 


46  Heavens 

intensified,  more  tropical  and  bewildering  and  bizarre? 
Have  you  nothing  in  that  line?" 

"Indeed  we  have,"  answered  the  patient  being. 
"There  are  two  or  three  of  which  we  are  actually  proud. 
Unfortunately,  I  cannot  show  you  one  of  our  most  pic 
turesque  Nirvanas.  It  is  closed  temporarily  for  re 
pairs,  or  research,  or  something  of  the  sort.  There 
are  rumors  abroad  that  certain  factors  have  conspired 
to  bring  about  its  temporary  suspension.  On  the  one 
hand,  it  is  accused  of  being  unauthentic;  on  the  other, 
it  is  said  to  be  immoral.  Being  angelic,  none  of  its 
citizens  is  able  to  judge.  Frankly,  I  am  sorry  I  cannot 
give  you  an  opportunity  to  determine  for  yourself." 

"But  can't  you  give  me  a  picture  of  the  place? 
Something  at  any  rate  a  little  more  definite?"  I  pleaded. 

"Very  possibly.  Let  me  see — "  He  drew  a  thin 
bundle  of  papers  from  the  folds  of  a  cerulean  mantle. 
"I  have  here  part  of  a  manuscript  which  was  rescued 
from  the  super-terrestrial  waste-basket  of  one  of  its 
chief  inhabitants.  It  purports  to  be  a  translation  from 
certain  pre-Provengal  poets,  but  several  contradictory 
anachronisms  make  me  question  the  existence  of  the 
original.  At  any  rate,  it  is  an  indubitably  accurate 
portrait  of  the  rich  though  restricted  region  I  was 
about  to  describe.  All  that  I  have  of  this  work  is  a 
rejected  chapter  and  a  title  page  which  reads  'Runes 
of  Life:  A  Comedy  of  Disappearances/  Adapted  and 


Third  Intermission  47 

Paraphrased  from  Biilg's  Les  Milles  Gestes  de  Deodric 
by  James  Branch  Cabell.    If  you  like,  I  will  read  it 
to  you." 
He  did. 


THE  HEAVEN  ABOVE  STORYSENDE 

THEY  of  Poictesme  tell  the  tale  how,  in  the  days 
when  the  impossible  was  the  one  thing  that  was  always 
happening,  Ortnitz  rode  forth  to  the  battlements  of 
Heaven.  They  narrate  how  Duke  Ortnitz  (who  later, 
was  to  be  known  in  Ostrogoth  as  Waldere,  in  Ross- 
land  as  Vidigoia  and  in  far  Scandia  as  Hrolfdeodric) 
set  out  with  a  company  of  scribes,  minstrels,  poets 
and  other  vagabonds.  For  nine  and  ninety  days  and 
no  one  knows  how  many  nights,  according  to  the  an 
cient  rune,  they  travelled.  Past  Pechlarn  they  rode, 
through  the  doubtful  country  of  the  Gjuki,  skirting 
the  forest  of  Niflhel  where  the  trees  move  about  mis 
erably  in  a  wailing  twilight.  At  last,  after  certain 
adventures  which  are  rather  more  unmentionable  than 
not,  Ortnitz  and  his  companions  arrived,  as  had  been 
predicted,  at  a  pool  surrounded  by  young  hazel  trees. 
The  circle  of  green  was  unbroken  save  where  one  half- 
stripped  and  aging  birch  held  out  its  mottled  arms  in 
a  remarkable  gesture  that  is  not  to  be  talked  about. 
Ortnitz  dismounted,  advanced  to  the  foot  of  this  ob 
scene  tree  and,  after  having  performed  that  which  was 
requisite,  cried  out: 

49 


50  Heavens 

"Now,  for  the  love  of  that  high  glamour  seen  before 
birth  and  beyond  the  grave,  we  stretch  our  arms  to 
the  moon  and  stammer  intolerably  some  battered 
stave.  Yet,  driven  by  hungers  beyond  the  yearning 
for  what  men  take  as  a  surety,  I  have  come  to  the  road 
that  has  no  turning  and  call  on  the  Leshy  to  answer 
me.  I  call  on  Hogni  and  Mersin- Apollo,  careless  of 
whether  they  choose  to  descend;  for  I  am  Ortnitz  and 
I  follow  after  the  unattainable  end." 

He  waited  awhile,  during  which  interval  a  little 
headless  bird  flew  three  times  over  the  pool,  and,  there 
being  no  answer,  Ortnitz  continued: 

"Now,  for  the  dust  of  that  dying  beacon  wavering 
still  in  the  tattered  shrine  of  autumn,  now  that  the 
old  lusts  weaken  and  the  night  is  only  spilled  dregs 
of  wine — drown,  in  its  ineffectual  juices,  whatever 
persists  of  the  memories  of  burning  thirsts  and  the  for 
gotten  uses  of  lips  that  reveal  their  inconstancies. 
Here,  on  the  rim  of  your  magic  hollow  I  have  aban 
doned  father  and  friend;  for  I  am  Ortnitz  and  I  fol 
low  after  the  unattainable  end." 

There  was  a  thin  sobbing  as  a  purple  mouse  perched 
on  the  back  of  a  salamander  ran  in  and  out  of  the 
jewel- weeds.  Twice  the  salamander  shed  his  skin  into 
the  waters  and  twice  a  faint  mist  rose  from  the  rip 
ples.  Then  cried  Ortnitz: 

"Now  for  the  end  of  that  final  glory  I  wait  and  bend 


The  Heaven  Above  Storysende  51 

a  complaisant  back,  here,  where  a  livid  aurora  borealis 
makes  all  demoniac.  Spurning  the  threat  of  the  head 
less  swallow,  I  neither  doubt,  nor  deny  nor  defend; 
for  I  am  Ortnitz  and  I — " 

These  sonorous  strophes  were  broken  by  a  rumble 
of  voices  that  issued  from  his  retinue.  And  Ortnitz, 
comprehending  that  the  spell  was  broken  beyond 
promise  of  repair,  retraced  his  steps  ruefully.  It  may 
be  that  he  felt  betrayed  by  those  who  should  have 
understood  him  best;  it  is  indisputable  that  his  high 
mood  was  bedwarfed  and,  impatient  at  such  belittle- 
ment,  he  turned  on  his  companions. 

"Do  you  tell  me  now  without  dubiety  or  odd  by- 
ends  of  metaphor,  what  may  this  turgescible  clatter 
portend?" 

"Messire,"  spoke  one  of  them,  a  lad  called  Arnaut 
Daniel,  "we  are  but  men;  nevertheless  we  are  poets. 
And  as  such  we  hold,  not  only  to  ourselves,  a  dread 
responsibility.  Look  you,  the  record  of  these  days 
and  unguessed  years  is  in  our  hands.  The  world  lives 
only  as  we  tell  of  it.  The  lurch  of  seas,  the  stealthy 
footsteps  of  the  grass,  the  huge  strides  of  the  sun 
across  the  sky,  the  mystery  and  mastery  of  flesh,  this 
snatch  and  blaze  and  insolence  of  life — who  is  to  know 
of  it  save  that  we  sing;  how  can  men  learn  of  it  ex 
cept  through  us?  Therefore,  subject  to  what  limita 
tions  are  placed  upon  us  by  our  eyes  and  ears,  are  we 


'52  Heavens 

bound  to  record  only  the  Good,  the  Beautiful  and  the 
True.  And  therefore,  messire,  must  we,  who  though 
poets  are  nevertheless  men,  be  bound  to  differ  in  the 
interpretation  of  these  three  beatitudes." 

Said  Ortnitz: 

"Ey,  but  wherein  can  there  be  so  noisy  and  divergent 
an  opinion;  the  good,  so  runs  the  ancient  cantrap,  is 
always  beautiful;  the  beautiful  is  true." 

Daniel  returned: 

"Good  only  for  the  time  being,  messire.  Beautiful 
only  as  a  challenge  to  egotism;  in  the  I  of  the  beholder. 
True  only  to  the  question  of  Pilate." 

"I  find  that  an  obscure  saying,"  Ortnitz  consid 
ered. 

"It  is  an  untrue  saying,"  broke  in  a  gaunt  fellow 
with  a  pair  of  cold  green  eyes  and  an  ugly  garden  uten 
sil  which  he  carried  in  lieu  of  an  instrument.  "There 
is  only  one  Truth  and  that  is  the  real  truth,  the  whole 
truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth.  All  the  Rest  is  Ro 
manticism.  I  have  not  seen  the  Soul  that  my  friends 
here  prate  of,  so  I  cannot  call  it  my  own;  but  I  can 
call  this  spade  a  spade.  If  you  will  only  listen  while 
I  play  upon  it,  it  will  dig  up  the  very  roots  of  song. 
With  it,  I  will  unearth  for  you  the  bowels  of  time. 
With  it  I  will  go  down  as  deep  as  hell." 

"And  as  high  as  heaven?"  questioned  Ortnitz,  not 
very  mirthfully. 


The  Heaven  Above  Storysende  53 

The  Realist  answered  nothing  but  with  a  gesture  of 
despair  mounted  his  horse  and,  followed  by  his  ad 
herents,  departed  toward  the  West. 

Then  Ortnitz  turned  to  a  far  more  timid  being  whose 
dented  and  flimsy  shield  bore  the  device  of  a  crumbling 
ivory  tower.  A  single  white  poppy  lay  sheathed  in  his 
painted  scabbard,  and  he  was  continually  discarding 
and  readjusting  variously  coloured  spectacles. 

"Do  you  not  heed  him,  beau  sire,"  exclaimed  this 
woeful  but  still  militant  minnesinger,  "do  you  not  heed 
a  syllable  of  his  mangled  prose.  For  that  which  lives 
to-day  is  only  an  echo  of  what  has  died — eh,  how  many 
times — and  all  this  that  seems  so  permanent  is  noth 
ing  more  than  the  echo  of  its  ghost.  For — look  you, 
messire,  what  is  reality  but  the  shadow  of  romance,  a 
shadow  that  most  men  take  for  the  substance.  These 
actual  adventures,  physical  encounters,  journeyings  of 
the  flesh — they  are  pallid  things  compared  to  the  imag 
ined  Odysseys.  Give  up  this  brutal  and  flagitious 
search.  Come  back  with  me,  master,  and  behold  grass 
that  never  fades,  love  that  never  deceives,  a  world 
without  smirch  or  squalor.  Come  back  with  me,  and 
you  shall  scale  insurmountable  summits,  swim  lakes 
of  blood,  plunge  through  hurricanes  of  fire,  possess  all 
women,  surpass  all  heroes.  You  shall  do  all  this  with 
out  leaving  your  hearth." 

"And  what  potent  agency  will  you  summon  to  ac- 


54  Heavens 

complish  these  not  undistinguished  miracles?"  inquired 
Ortnitz. 

He  answered:  "The  myths  and  annals  of  the  past." 

"An  indubitable  magic,  O  dusty  dreamer.  Yet  I 
am  bound  for  present  dangers,  newer  hazards.  For 
I  am  Ortnitz  and  I  follow  after  the  unattainable  end 
of  which  no  man  ever  has  had  cognizance.  Will  you 
.not  throw  away  your  variously  coloured  spectacles  and 
follow  me  who  am  not  altogether  blind?" 

The  Romanticist  answered  nothing  but,  with  a  ges 
ture  of  dismay,  mounted  his  horse  and,  followed  by 
his  adherents,  departed  toward  the  East. 

"Nay, — ho,  and  even  were  the  fellow  less  pitifully 
his  own  fool,  you  answered  him  rightly,  messire,  and 
you  are  well  rid  of  him  and  his  wistful  tribe!" 

This  one  was  a  lank  individual  with  womanish  hands 
and  rouged  lips.  He  was  clad  in  a  brocaded  golden 
stuff  that  shimmered  upon  him  like  scales  on  a  yellow 
serpent  and  from  time  to  time  he  sipped  at  a  curiously 
carved  vial  labelled  "Poison." 

"Hah,  what  should  such  a  maudlin  evader  know  of 
Beauty?  His  luke-warm  world  has  none  of  it,"  cried 
this  fantastic  madman.  "Come  with  me,  master,  and 
you  shall  live  not  unmoved  among  extraordinary  hun 
gers,  strange  and  perverse  desires.  In  my  demesne, 
day  never  dawns  and  sunlight  is  unknown.  Great  evil 
flowers,  undreamed  of  here,  add  their  hot  fragrance 


The  Heaven  Above  Storysende  55 

to  the  spicy  night.  There  our  bodies,  capable  of  new 
and  curious  pleasures,  will  lie  among  lace  and  lilies,  ca 
ressed  by  queens  and  the  hands  of  queens'  daughters. 
Virgin  harlots  with  breasts  like  boys'  will  dance  for 
us  beneath  a  ring  of  moons  while  nightingales  go  mad. 
Come,"  he  cried  with  a  wan  rapture,  "we  shall  hear 
black  masses  sung  in  forests  whose  design  was  Time's 
contemporary  and  where  all  uncreated  loveliness  lies 
hidden.  There,  by  the  Terrible  Tree,  will  we  find  red 
Lilith  who,  rejected  by  Adam  for  a  white  and  simper 
ing  Eve,  assumed  the  form  of  a  snake  and  thus  rid 
Paradise  of  its  tepid  inhabitants.  There,  master,  you 
shall  never  grow  sane  and  temperate  and  old,  but  pass 
from  fever  to  fever,  fed  by  fantastic  cravings,  roused 
and  rejuvenated  by  sin." 

For  a  moment  Ortnitz  meditated,  while  a  shadow  no 
larger  than  a  crow's  foot  crept  into  the  corner  of  his 
eyes. 

"Pardieu,"  he  answered  at  length,  abut  I  am  no 
longer  young  enough  for  such  a  high-flying  eternity. 
These  are  pretty  passions  you  offer  me,  to  be  sure,  and 
I  would  be  the  last  to  examine  them  too  circumspectly, 
but  still,"  Ortnitz  estimated  drily,  "but  still  it  is  not 
sin  alone  will  bring  me  to  a  heaven,  however  scarlet  it 
may  prove  to  be.  What  stock  have  you  of  innocence? 
Can  you  not  show  me  an  unaffected  virtue  or  two  and 
a  paltry  half-dozen  of  assorted  simplicities?" 


56  Heavens 

The  Decadent  answered  nothing  but,  with  a  gesture 
of  disdain,  mounted  his  horse  and,  followed  by  his  ad 
herents,  departed  toward  the  South. 

Then  up  spoke  the  last  and  youngest  leader  of  them, 
sweeping  a  viola  d'amore  that  had  but  one  string.  His 
face  was  smooth  and  more  asexual  than  an  angel's 
and  his  thick  hair  shone  like  a  tossing  golden  flame. 
Sang  this  one: 

"Goodness  and  beauty  and  truth.  .  .  .  Where? 
Well,  but  only  in  song?  .  .  .  Honor,  Nobility,  Youth, 
Goodness  and  Beauty — and  Truth — shrink  from  man's 
clutches.  In  sooth,  no  man  can  hold  them  for  long. 
.  .  .  Goodness  and  Beauty  and  Truth  wear  well.  But 
only  in  Song!" 

"A  skeptical  though  neatly-joined  triolet,"  smiled 
Ortnitz.  "But  you  talk  in  riddles,  my  fine  young  poet, 
for  all  your  cynically  smooth  generalities.  Yet  why 
should  I  desist?  And  for  what,  more  specifically, 
would  you  have  me  abandon  my  quest  for  truth,  jus 
tice  and  those  ultimates  which  are  the  pavement  and 
the  pillars  of  heaven?" 

Thus  answered  the  minstrel: 

"I  offer  you  more  than  earthly  riches  in  coin  that 
none  but  the  poet  pays: — Freedom  from  all  the  stings 
and  itches  of  every  trivial  splutter  and  blaze;  a  cup 
of  healing;  a  stirrup  of  praise;  a  mood  to  meet  the 


The  Heaven  Above  Storysende  57 

challenge  of  pleasure;  a  lilt  to  the  feet  of  dragging 
days — all  in  the  heart  of  a  minstrel's  measure." 

Said  Ortnitz:  "That  is  indeed  much  to  promise." 

But  the  youth  continued : 

"I  offer  you  more.  I  offer  you  niches  where  a  sour 
world's  grumbling  never  strays;  where  ripples  a  mirth 
ful  music  which  is  an  echo  of  man's  first  laughter  that 
plays  in  various  keys  and  secret  ways.  There  still 
is  a  land  of  Light  and  Leisure  (if  you  will  pardon  so 
mouldy  a  phrase)  all  in  the  heart  of  a  minstrel's  meas 
ure." 

Said  Ortnitz:  "A  great  deal,  to  be  sure.  At  the  same 
time — "  His  interjection  was  interrupted  by  the  poet 
who  pursued  his  rhapsody,  crying: 

"I  offer  all  that  ever  bewitches  the  mind  of  man 
from  its  yeas  and  nays.  To  the  poet,  immortal  hemi- 
stitches;  to  the  soldier,  conquest  crowned  with  the  bays; 
to  the  lover,  the  breath  of  a  thousand  Mays;  to  the 
boy,  a  jingle  of  buried  treasure;  to  the  cheated  and 
broken,  a  merciful  haze.  All  in  the  heart  of  a  min 
strel's  measure. 

"Master,  I  offer  what  never  decays  though  all  else 
wither.  Master,  what  says  your  will  to  the  magics 
that  quicken  and  raise  all  in  the  heart  of  a  minstrel's 
measure?" 

He  paused. 


58  Heavens 

"My  will  says  no,  although  my  heart  approves  the 
purport  as  well  as  the  burden  of  your  ballade,"  replied 
Ortnitz  not  dispassionately.  "But  I  must  go  further 
than  this  place,  even  after  the  unattainable  end,  and 
I  find  little  comfort  and  less  pleasure  in  the  doing  of 
it,  and  I  would  you  were  coming  with  me." 

The  Lyricist  answered  nothing  but,  without  lower 
ing  his  eyes,  came  closer  to  Ortnitz.  And  Ortnitz  saw 
why  he  would  have  to  make  the  journey  without  him, 
and  he  spoke: 

"And  so,  farewell,  you  who  dream  in  rhyme  for  I 
see  your  heaven  will  always  be  here,  an  overwordy 
and  somewhat  silly  Nirvana  but — God  help  me! — a 
lovelier  place  than  I  have  ever  known.  And  so  fare 
well." 

And  the  last  poet  answered: 

"Farewell,  Duke  Ortnitz,  farewell,  unhappy  clay 
that  seeks  what  it  can  never  find.  Farewell,  dreamer 
whose  dreams  are  ten  times  more  pitiful  than  mine  for 
that  yours  have  reason  but  no  rhyme.  Surely  you 
will  go  for  a  while — as  long  as  this  niggardly  life  will 
allow,  it  may  be — half-disillusioned,  half-desperately, 
questing  some  comforting  finality,  some  assurance  in  a 
world  of  illimitable  perplexities  and  contradictions. 
Surely  you  will  be  buffeted  here  and  there,  searching 
vainly  for  the  secret  of  those  cryptic  platitudes  that 
enliven  religion,  wars,  persecutions,  lynchings  and  all 


The  Heaven  Above  Storysende  59 

other  such  high  crusades.  And  to  what  end?  Eh  sirs, 
you  will  go  down  a  bitterer  man  than  you  are  now — a 
preposterous  but  not  unheroic  creature.  And  so  I  cry 
farewell  with  laughing  pity,  but  with  envy,  too." 

Now  the  tale  tells  that  Ortnitz  was  quite  alone  amid 
the  circle  of  hazel  trees.  And,  after  he  had  stood  there 
until  the  wings  of  the  Lyricist's  white  horse  were  no 
longer  discernible  in  the  sky,  Ortnitz  went  about  his 
last  conjuration  with  a  sadder  but  no  less  determined 
expression.  It  was  a  blasphemous  and  appalling  rit 
ual,  which  it  is  neither  essential  nor  wise  to  record. 
But,  after  the  final  ceremonies  had  been  performed 
with  a  queerly  constructed  crystal  of  sphalerite,  and  the 
jintsan  root  shaped  like  a  man  had  come  to  life  and  set 
about  that  which  was  necessary,  the  waters  of  the  pool 
were  lifted.  They  grew  solid,  formed  into  steps,  one 
ripple  following  another,  until  Ortnitz  beheld  an  ex 
traordinary  glassy  stair-case  leading  straight  toward 
the  zenith.  With  a  not  unnatural  wonder,  he  ascended. 

For  nine  and  ninety  days  and  no  one  knows  how 
many  nights,  Ortnitz  climbed  those  watery  stairs.  At 
length  he  came  to  the  threshold  of  heaven.  He 
knocked.  There  was  no  answer.  Then,  raising  his 
voice,  he  cried,  "I  am  Ortnitz,  and  I  have  come  to  learn 
of  what  miraculous  composition  and  in  what  unlikely 
manner  were  designed  those  elements  of  truth,  justice 


60  Heavens 

and  goodness  which  are  the  pavement  and  the  pillars 
of  heaven." 

There  was  no  answer. 

Then  Ortnitz  noticed  that  the  hinges  of  the  gate  were 
rusty  and  that  the  huge  door  itself  stood  slightly  ajar. 
Leaning  his  body  against  it,  he  pushed  it  open  and 
entered  while  space  rang  with  an  insane  creaking.  Ort 
nitz  stood  astounded.  The  place  was  empty.  A  few 
spiders  were  spinning  in  what  seemed  to  be  an  aban 
doned  and  primitive  courtyard.  There  were  neither 
pillars  nor  pavement.  And  Ortnitz,  according  to  the 
Volundarkvidha,  returned  to  Storysende. 

Thus  it  was  in  the  old  days. 


Fourth  Intermission 

"You  do  not  look  as  enthusiastic  as  I  had  hoped," 
said  my  guiding  spirit  after  he  had  stopped  reading. 

"No,"  I  answered,  "I  have  not  lost  my  admiration 
for  this  web  of  words  but  I  am  afraid  I  am  not  medi 
aeval  enough  to  live  comfortably  in  such  a  tapestry. 
I  have  not  sufficient  poetry  in  my  nature  for  such 
highly  colored  prose;  I  am  too  dull  a  doggerel." 

"Granting  that,"  he  murmured  with  a  benign  toler 
ance,  "what  would  you  have?" 

"I  don't  know  exactly,"  I  hesitated,  rubbing  an  astral 
chin,  "I  am  sure  I  could  never  learn  to  talk  this  lan 
guage.  I  do  not  understand  its  signs  and  symbolic 
veil  cities;  the  whole  thing  seems  perversely  cryptic  and 
cabalistic.  You  see,  I'm  an  American  to  begin  with 
— much  too  provincial  for  Provence — and,  coming 
from  the  state  of  Missouri,  I  ..." 

"Wait — I  have  an  idea,"  interrupted  the  angel  with 
no  little  animation.  "I  think  I  know  the  very  place 
for  you.  How  would  you  like  to  dwell  in  the  Middle 
Western  Heaven?" 

"You  don't  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  have  a  special 
heaven  for  midwesterners?"  I  gasped. 

61 


62  Heavens 

"Not  for  strictly  geographical  mid- westerners,"  he 
replied  with  the  suspicion  of  a  smile.  "But  ever  since 
the  success  of  your  Main  Street,  Moon  Calf,  Poor 
White,  Miss  Lulu  Bett  and  others,  that  region  has  be 
come  fixed  in  the  literary  firmament.  There  was  noth 
ing  else  to  do  but  recognize  it  officially  and  make  the 
necessary  arrangements.  The  structure,  I  warn  you, 
is  by  no  means  completed;  the  architecture  is  rather 
sketchy,  and  the  material  itself  is  not  distinguished  by 
its  finish.  But  you,  doubtless,  are  not  over-particular. 
If  you  will  step  this  way.  .  .  ." 


THE  HEAVEN  OF  MEAN  STREETS 

A  PLACE  of  crude  color  and  primitive  contrasts.  A 
place,  indefinite  in  area  and  uncertain  in  its  geography, 
that  looked  like  the  meeting-ground  and  battle-field 
of  a  hundred  cultures.  This  apotheosis  of  the  Middle 
West  seemed  reared  indifferently  upon  the  black  mud- 
banks  of  the  Missouri  river,  the  blare  and  windy  en 
ergy  of  northern  Illinois,  the  gaunt  stretches  of  Min 
nesota,  the  epic  prairies  of  Nebraska.  A  helter-skelter 
combination  of  parochial  village,  stark  countryside  and 
cheap,  gritty  industrial  towns — the  triumph  of  the 
booster  over  the  backwoodsman,  the  pioneer  sup 
planted  by  the  press-agent.  Even  the  ground  had  no 
uniformity.  Here  ran  a  wooden  pavement  with  sev 
eral  boards  broken  and  clumps  of  weeds  sprouting  in 
the  irregular  gaps  between  the  planks;  beyond  it  was 
trampled  dirt,  a  yellow  soil,  untilled  and  stony;  oppo 
site,  a  smug  concrete  sidewalk  with  a  "parking"  of 
grass  was  lined  with  sickly  trees  on  which  the  aphis 
had  been  at  work. 

The  architecture — if  one  could  call  it  that — was 
similarly  nondescript.  Ramshackle,  unpainted,  box- 
like  houses  stood  among  garish  two-story  brick  gro- 

63 


64  Heavens 

ceries,  with  signs  of  the  B.P.O.E.  and  Knights  of 
Pythias  above  the  bleached  awnings,  or  leaned  apa 
thetically  against  The  Eureka  Garage  with  its  grease- 
blackened,  slippery  floor.  A  third  generation  farm 
house  squirmed  between  The  Nemo  Moving  Picture 
Palace  with  its  tawdry  electric  sign  in  which  eight  of 
the  bulbs  were  missing  and  the  Paris  Emporium,  whose 
half-washed  windows  displayed  assorted  fly-spotted 
packages  of  garden-seeds,  faded  cotton  blankets,  over 
alls  with  metal  buckles  showing  a  film  of  rust,  gray 
hot-water  bottles,  a  tray  of  tarnished  plated-post  link- 
buttons,  several  bolts  of  plaid  ginghams  and  two  strips 
of  wrinkled  fly-paper  on  one  of  which  a  large  wasp 
was  buzzing  incongruously. 

One  could  see  the  interior  of  these  houses.  .  .  .  The 
musty  bedrooms  with  their  broken  rocking-chairs,  their 
chromo-lithographs  of  Rosa  Bonheur's  "Horse  Fair"  on 
one  wall  and  a  water-stained  engraving  of  General 
Lee's  Surrender  on  the  other.  The  dining-room  with 
tasteless  food  gulped  noisily  by  people  to  whom  "taste" 
was  an  effeminate  affectation,  its  shoddily  upholstered 
chairs  with  the  imitation  leather  peeling  off  at  the  cor 
ners,  its  broken  cuckoo  clock  with  its  listless  pendulum, 
its  plated  silver  fruit  dish  standing  with  a  dull  dignity 
and  eternal  emptiness  on  a  rickety  side-board.  The 
parlor  with  its  dirty  portieres,  its  green  plush  sofa  from 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  65 

which  the  nap  had  long  since  been  worn,  the  bright 
mahogany  upright  piano,  metallically  out  of  tune  and 
the  false  ebony  missing  from  the  lowest  C  sharp  key, 
the  curio  cabinet,  a  nightmare  of  scrolls  with  its  five 
shelves  of  souvenirs,  card-board  jewel-boxes  encrusted 
with  shells,  pewter  spoons  showing  a  bas-relief  view 
of  the  Washington  monument,  a  filigree-wire  brooch 
that  spelled  "Minnie,"  a  Columbian  half-dollar 
mounted  in  a  bezel  as  a  charm,  a  thick  red  glass  tum 
bler  with  the  words  "Greetings  from  Sioux  City  Fair" 
etched  in  white.  .  .  . 

"And  for  this,"  a  voice  was  saying  with  ghostly 
shudders,  "Davy  Crockett  tamed  the  wilderness  and 
Ponce  de  Leon  died  to  discover  the  fountain  of  eternal 
youth.  For  this  shrine  of  sodden  respectability  and 
standardized  negation,  Sappho  burned,  Rome  fell  and 
Da  Vinci  planned  his  most  fantastic  dreams!" 

It  was  a  girlish  figure  that  spoke.  Trig,  bright- 
eyed,  poised  like  a  humming  bird  ready  to  dart  off  at 
a  tangent,  with  a  rather  sentimental  chin  and  a  batik 
blouse,  she  seemed  like  a  cross  between  a  sublimated 
sophomore  and  an  enthusiastic  catalogue  of  the  Roy- 
crofters  Arts  and  Crafts  Association. 

"I  imagine — er — it  must  be,"  I  stammered,  "surely 
you  are  Mrs.  Carol  Kennicott?" 

"How  did  you  know?"  she  answered,  with  a  ripple 


66  Heavens 

of  surprise.  "But  that  doesn't  matter.  Of  course  I 
am.  And  I'm  frightfully  glad  to  see  you.  When  did 
you  come?  And  can  I  show  you  around?" 

"Thanks.  I'd  be  delighted.  And  this  is  your 
heaven?" 

"Heaven  forbid!"  she  shuddered  visibly.  "This  is 
the  place  we  transplanted  Middle  Westerners  keep  as 
an  Awful  Example.  We  only  come  here  when  we  are 
in  danger  of  slipping  into  our  mundane  apathy  or  when 
we  need  material  for  our  celestial  novels.  You  see 
the  realistic  method  has  its  penalties.  Now  our  real 
heaven —  But  do  come  along  and  let  me  show  you." 

We  walked  past  several  greasy  cross  streets,  littered 
with  unshaded  "community  buildings,"  tin  cans  and 
asthmatic  Fords.  And  then,  suddenly — ! 

"...  and  that  structure  which  looks  like  the  Parthe 
non  remodelled  by  Robert  Edmund  Jones,"  she  was 
saying  as  I  emerged  from  a  dazzled  unconsciousness, 
"is  Axel  Egge's  General  Music  Store  with  the  loveliest 
assortment  of  Self-Playing  Harps  you  ever  heard.  We 
have  two  at  home.  You  ought  to  see  Will  working  the 
pedals  while  he  runs  off  The  Rosary.'  That  replica 
of  St.  Mark's  ornamented  with  busts  of  Pestalozzi, 
Dalcroze,  Montessori,  Froebel  and  Freud,  is  the  school 
building  erected  by  the  Sacred  Seventeen.  That  large 
octagonal  field,  flanked  by  Ionic  columns,  is  the  Isa 
dora  Duncan  Stadium  where  we  have  our  weekly  meet- 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  67 

ings  of  the  Y.P.A.A.A.A.— the  Young  People's  Es 
thetic  and  Athletic  Association,  you  know.  The  baths 
of  Caracalla?  Oh,  you  mean  Ezra  Stowbody's  First 
Celestial  Bank.  Impressive,  don't  you  think?  That 
row  of  Devonshire  cottages?  We're  rather  proud  of 
that  bit — it  is  Ye  Streete  of  Lyttle  Shoppes,  full  of 
quaint  things  and  the  loveliest  reproductions  of  real 
antiques.  That  vista  of  Oriental  arcades  is  our  park 
ing  space  for  fiery  chariots  designed  by  Lee  Simonson. 
The  fountain  is  by  Rodin  after  a  sketch  by  Raymie 
Witherspoon.  That  heroic  statue  of  the  western  world 
is  the  work  of  Paul  Darde.  He  calls  it  The  Pipes  of 
Pan- America.  So  symbolic,  isn't  it?  And  that  group 
of  neo- Aztec  residences  by  Frank  Wright — " 

"Why — hello,  Carrie!  Didn't  know  you  were  out 
for  a  stroll.  How's  tricks  to-day — huh?"  It  was  a 
gruff,  kindly  voice  emanating  from  a  tied-and-dyed 
toga. 

"Oh,  Will,  how  you  startled  me!  I  had  no  idea — 
oh,  allow  me  to  present  my  husband,  Dr.  Kennicott." 

"Glad  t'  meet  any  friend  of  Carrie's.  How're  you 
making  out?  Been  here  long?  Ain't  it  a  dream  of  a 
place?  Greatest  little  spot  in  all  creation,  I'll  say. 
Darn  artistic,  every  inch  of  it  and  not  a  plank-walk  in 
miles.  Full  of  up-and-coming  people,  too.  Lewis — 
you  know — the  famous  author  of — what's  the  name  of 
that  book,  Carrie,  the  one  you  and  the  Thanatopsis 


68  Heavens 

Club  enjoyed  so  much? — well,  he  lives  here.  Wouldn't 
change,  he  says,  for  any  place  in  Heaven.  Tried  'em 
all  but  he's  back  here  to  stay — you  can  see  him  most 
any  time  floating  along  the  avenue  talking  to  the  real 
estate  boys — just  plain  folks  like  the  rest  of  'em.  And 
say,  has  Carrie  shown  you  our  new  shack?  What? 
Well,  you  come  right  along  and — " 

"But  don't  you  think,"  I  stammered,  "that  if  I  ac 
cepted  your  kind  offer — " 

"Why,  Lord  love  you,  brother,  don't  worry  yourself 
about  that.  You  just  hop  along  and  take  pot  luck  with 
us.  No  trouble  at  all — not  by  a  long  shot!  We'll 
shake  up  a  cup  of  nectar  and  some  boiled  ambrosia  if 
there's  nothing  else.  You  come  right  up  and —  Well, 
look  who's  here!  If  it  ain't  Juanita  Haydock  and 
Rita  Simons  all  dressed  up  and  no  place  to  go.  Where 
you  been,  ladies?  Stand  and  deliver — an  open  con 
fession,  you  know,  is  good  for  the  soul." 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  very  improper,"  giggled  Rita, 
"we've  been  over  to  the  Bernard  Shaw  Heaven  to  hear 
him  read  the  preface  to  his  latest  drama  of  religion 
and  the  race.  'Back  to  the  Protoplasm,'  he  calls  it. 
An  awful  bore.  Shaw  is  getting  frightfully  dull,  don't 
you  think?  And  so  sentimental!" 

"It  isn't  his  old-fashioned  sentiment  that  I  object 
to,"  Juanita  Haydock  contributed  in  her  high  cackle, 
"it  does  him  credit,  poor  dear.  It's  his  public-school 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  69 

ideas!  I  suppose  there  was  a  time  when  the  man  was 
amusing,  but  his  trick  of  stating  the  obvious  in  terms 
of  the  scandalous  (you  remember  the  wicked  phrase 
in  The  Tart  Set)  is  really  too  provincial." 

"That's  true,"  Carol  hurriedly  assented,  "his  influ 
ence  on  the  Neighborhood  Heaven  has  been  anything 
but  the  best.  It  used  to  be  such  a  lovely,  experimental 
centre  for  newly-incubated  prose  poems  and  plastiques. 
But  ever  since  he  and  Dunsany  have  been  helping  them 
put  on  their  bills,  there's  practically  no  chance  for  the 
younger  writer — not  that  I  am  in  any  hurry  to  see  my 
few  things  produced  (and  I  would  simply  have  to  have 
the  right  atmosphere) — but  it's  too  bad  to  see  how 
they  are  pandering  to  the  most  commonplace  and  con 
ventional  tastes." 

"Yes!"  chimed  in  Rita,  "could  anything  be  more 
bourgeois  than  'Reigen'  or  those  other  Schnitzler  plays 
they  gave  last  week?" 

"Or  those  hackneyed  monodramas  by  Evreinof," 
flung  out  Juanita,  "with  outmoded  settings  by  Gordon 
Craig.  Next,  I  suppose  they'll  trot  out  a  back-number 
like  Reinhardt  and  have  him  put  on  things  that  have 
been  done  to  death  like  Hardy's  'Dynasts.'  If  it 
weren't  for  you,  Carol,  they'd  be  trying  to  foist  that 
sort  of  half-baked  fare  on  our  own  Drama  League." 

"Yes,"  agreed  Rita,  "if  it  weren't  for  you—" 

"I  suppose,  Mrs.  Kennicott,"  I  interrupted,  "that  you 


70  Heavens 

are  the  god — I  should  say  the  goddess — of  this  par 
ticular  Nirvana." 


"She  certainly  ought  to  be  if  she  isn't,"  Carol's 
henchwomen  chorused. 

"The  fact  is,"  added  the  doctor,  "you've  opened  up 
a  rather  sore  topic  that's  just  coming  to  a  head.  As 
things  are,  there're  too  many  claimants  to  the  so-to- 
speak  throne.  'Course  there's  no  question  who's  en 
titled  to  it.  Before  Carrie  came  here,  what  sort  of 
place  was  this,  anyway?  A  kidney-colored,  slab-sided 
dump  that  might  have  been  Paradise  to  a  poor  white 
like  Hugh  McVey  but  hopeless  for  any  live,  art-loving 
guys.  Beauty,  hell!  None  in  a  million  miles  and  no 
one  around  with  enough  nerve  or  gumption  to  find  any. 
Along  comes  this  little  lady,  stirs  up  a  lot  of  old  Scan- 
dahoofians,  puts  pep  into  a  bunch  of  hexes  and  grinds 
that  only  think  of  getting  the  world's  work  done,  fills 
this  dried-up  burg  with  a  real  honest-to-God  pride  in 
itself,  puts  her  shoulder  to  the  job  and  digs  in.  And 
to-day —  Well-1-1."  He  waved  a  proud  and  compre 
hensive  arm  with  a  gesture  that  lost  a  little  of  its  con 
fidence  as  its  sweep  met  the  figure  of  a  tall,  lean  man 
with  a  shambling  gait  and  a  long,  serious  face.  "Sorry, 
McVey,  didn't  see  you  coming." 

"That's  all  right,"  said  Hugh.     "That's  all  right." 

A  lump  arose  in  Hugh's  throat  and  for  a  moment 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  71 

he  was  torn  with  silence  and  self-pity.  He  thought  of 
the  old  days  in  heaven  before  the  coming  of  Carol,  and 
of  the  old  days  on  earth  before  the  coming  of  industry, 
before  the  time  of  the  mad  activities,  before  the  Wines- 
burgs  and  Picklevilles  had  grown  into  the  Daytons, 
the  Akrons  and  all  the  shrill  new  towns  scattered  over 
the  flat  lands.  He  thought  of  the  time  when  a  quiet 
light  used  to  play  over  the  men  and  women  walking 
on  country  roads  and  moonlit  hills,  working  in  the 
fields,  hooking  rag  rugs,  making  shoes,  believing  in  a 
God  and  dreaming  great  and  serious  dreams.  From 
all  sides,  to-day,  he  heard  the  clamor  of  a  swifter  age 
shouting  at  him  in  a  voice  that  spoke  of  huge  numbers 
in  a  terrible,  mechanical  definiteness.  He  witnessed 
the  erection  of  new  systems  and  movements  that  were 
demolished  as  fast  as  they  were  put  up.  He  saw  men, 
massed  in  some  gigantic  machine,  cutting  and  grind 
ing  their  way  through  other  men.  He  saw  the  crushed 
bodies,  heard  the  unuttered  cries  of  the  defeated  and 
trampled  millions. 

"I  guess  you're  right,"  he  said  at  last,  "it's  your 
place,  not  mine.  I  ain't  fitten  for  it.  It  was  too  much 
for  me  down  there.  And  it's  too  fancy  up  here.  I 
ain't  fitten  for  it." 

"But  surely,  Mr.  McVey,"  I  objected,  "you  don't 
intend  to  renounce  your  claim  so  lightly.  If  you  were 
the  presiding  Genius  of  this  Heaven,  you  could  easily 


72  Heavens 

invent  something  that  would  turn  these  mean  streets 
into  ambling  roads  as  quickly  as  Mrs.  Kennicott  has 
changed  them  into  brisk  boulevards." 

"Thanks.  But  it  wouldn't  be  right.  I  ain't  much 
of  a  hand  at  running  things.  Besides,  I  promised 
Clara  to  get  out  of  politics.  I  ain't  fitten  for  it.  Clara 
and  I  are  pulling  for  some  one  we  can  understand." 

"Which  means?" 

"Meaning  that  I'm  withdrawing  in  favor  of  this 
lady  here."  He  indicated  an  olive-colored  woman, 
once  handsome,  with  a  flat  chest  and  eyes  that  wa 
vered  between  being  wistful  and  determined,  a  woman 
who  had  drifted  noiselessly  to  where  they  were  stand 
ing.  "I  mean  Miss  Lulu  Bett." 

The  other  members  of  the  group  gasped.  Carol 
shuddered.  "Uh — but  dear  Lulu  doesn't  know  a  thing 
about  city-planning  or  eugenics  or  community  kitchens 
or  Keats  or  intensive  recreation  or  how  to  put  on  a 
Morris  Dance  or  Motherhood  Endowment  or  Pageants 
for  the  Poor  or — " 

"Oh,  no,"  Lulu  disclaimed.  "Of  course  I  don't  know 
anything  about  such  things.  I  suppose  there's  lots 
of  other  things  I'd  better  know,  too.  But  I  did  see 
some  dances.  It  was  in  Savannah.  Savannah,  Geor 
gia.  I  don't  know  the  names  of  all  the  different  dances 
they  did  but  there  were  a  good  many.  And  they  were 
real  pretty." 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  73 

Never  a  skilled  conversationalist,  Lulu  paused,  con 
scious  of  the  fact  that  the  topic  was  not  quite  ex 
hausted.  Then  she  gulped  and  went  on,  "There  was 
a  large  band  playing,  too.  I  don't  know  how  many 
musicians  they  had  in  it,  but  there  were  a  good  many. 
It  was  in  a  big  hotel  and  the  room  was  too  crowded. 
We" — she  flushed  suddenly — "my  first  husband  and 
I — I  think  it  was  my  first  husband,  although  the  play 
and  the  book  the  lady  wrote  about  me  mixed  me  up 
sort  of  about  myself — we  were  watching  the  dancing. 
I  was  ashamed  at  first.  I  started  to  get  up.  Then  I 
set  down.  I  made  up  my  mind  to  see  what  there  was. 
I  said  I  was  going  to  learn  all  I  could  from  Savannah, 
Georgia.  I  did." 

"And  is  that  all  you  learned?"  Carol  smiled,  not 
without  a  thin  coating  of  ice  about  the  question. 

"Oh,  no,"  Lulu  answered  with  even  more  of  her 
usual  innocence.  "After  my  second  marriage — "  she 
gulped  again,  turning  a  dull  brick  color,  "I  either  mar 
ried  Mr.  Cornish  who  kept  music  or  I  re-married  Mr. 
Deacon — the  lady  got  me  confused  about  it  and  I'm 
not  sure  which — well,  we  came  to  New  York  City,  New 
York.  We  stayed  there  five  days.  I  liked  it.  They 
had  some  lovely  views  there  and  there  were  a  lot  of 
people  in  the  streets  all  the  time.  And  it  was  too 
hot." 


74  Heavens 

"And  the  result  of  your  metropolitan  researches — " 
Carol  proceeded  remorselessly. 

"Well,  we  went  to  a  lot  of  little  places  to  eat.  Mostly 
down  in  cellars  with  candles.  They  had  queer  names. 
One  of  them  was  like  a  ship  and  the  waiters  were 
dressed  like  pirates.  It  was  just  like  a  play.  And 
everybody  talked.  They  didn't  do  anything.  They 
talked  about  what  you  said.  About  pageants"  [Lulu 
pronounced  it  "payjunts"]  "and  the  state's  babies  and 
why  the  City  Hall  should  be  done  over  by  a — I  think 
they  said — Compressionist,  and — " 

"She's  right."  This  was  Felix  Fay,  a  slim  young 
man,  careless  as  to  dress  and  yet  both  conscious  and 
proud  of  his  carelessness.  A  shock  of  insurgent  hair 
and  the  eyes  of  a  dreamer  coming  slowly  face  to  face 
with  reality. 

"She's  right.  Main  Street  or  Greenwich  Village;  it 
is  only  a  difference  of  longitude  and — in  both  senses 
of  the  word — latitude.  You  flatter  yourselves  that 
you  are  'advanced,'  that  you  have  acquired  social  con 
tacts  or  social  consciousness.  But  what  are  you,  un 
derneath  this  veneer  of  culture?  Carol,  adrift  on  a 
rose-water  sea  of  dreams,  Hugh  stumbling  darkly 
among  his  own  machines — Moon-calves,  all  of  you — 
even  poor  Lulu,  lost  in  her  childish  fantasies.  Worst 
of  all,  Carol !  Crying  not  only  for  the  moon — you  see, 
even  here,  the  significant  symbol — but  wailing  for  a 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  J$ 

new  earth  and  a  whole  new  set  of  constellations!  If 
you  really  want  a  god — " 

"I  suppose,  young  man,  you  could  suggest  the  can 
didate,"  sneered  Dr.  Kennicott. 

"I  could,"  returned  Felix  unabashed,  "and  I  will. 
What  we  need  in  this  place  is  air — lots  of  it — salt 
breezes  to  sweep  out  these  musty  fantasies.  We  need 
a  harsher,  a  more  pragmatic  realism;  a  combination, 
if  you  can  stand  it,  of  Karl  Marx,  Rabelais  and  Fried- 
rich  Nietzsche." 

"And  you  got  the  nerve  to  suggest  that  you — " 

"Not  at  all,"  calmly  continued  Felix,  "I  propose 
H.  L.  Mencken,  the  wild  Webster  of  the  American 
language." 

"Mencken?"  gasped  the  others  and  "Mencken?" 
spluttered  Kennicott  with  sudden  exasperation,  "why 
— that's  impossible.  He's  too — er — vulgar,  he  ain't 
got  the  right  idea  at  all.  He's  clever  enough — oh,  I'll 
admit  that — but  when  it  comes  to  the  things  that  count, 
the  big  things  like  reverence  and  uplift  and  respect 
for  women  and  civic  pride  and  patriotism,  why,  he  isn't 
there  at  all!  Besides,  what  right  has  he  got  in  a 
Middle  Western  Heaven?  Ain't  he  from  Baltimore?" 

"And  if  I  am,"  retorted  a  voice,  well  oiled  with  in 
dignation  and  Pilsner,  a  voice  that  emanated  from  a 
heavy-set  individual  who  seemed  to  be  a  combination 
of  a  visiting  privat-docent  and  a  seraphic  butcher-boy, 


76  Heavens 

"what  if  I  am,  my  masters,  originally  a  citizen  of  the 
great  Sahara  of  the  South?  Did  I  not  bang  the  drum 
for  every  Westerner  who  lifted  himself  by  sheer  mule- 
power  above  the  run  of  jackasses  and  old  maids  of  both 
sexes?  Did  I  not  champion  Dreiser's  Illinois  before 
he  suffered  from  delusions  of  grandeur,  when  any  one 
engaged  in  such  a  crusade  was  howled  down  and  ac 
cused  of  sedition,  free  love,  hello  gab  alisme,  obstruct 
ing  the  traffic  in  cheap  fiction,  obscenity,  loss  of  critical 
manhood,  moral  turpitude,  anarchy,  inciting  to  riot 
and  mayhem?  Finally,  did  I  not  trek  through  the 
sodden  hinterland  to  discover  Chicago  and  hail  it  as 
America's  literary  center?" 

"But,"  I  interposed,  "Mr.  Kennicott  thinks  that 
your  standards  might  find  more  appreciative  audiences 
in — er — less  sanctified  centers  than  Heaven." 

"Bah!"  snapped  Mencken,  "even  Brander  Mat 
thews  would  know  better  than  that!  What  this  place 
needs  is  a  little  force  majeure  to  free  it  from  its  blub 
bering  Sklavenmoral.  It  would  be  vastly  more 
dignified  and  downright  entertaining  if  we  could  get 
rid  of  the  rumble-bumble  of  the  pious  snouters,  the 
gaudy  bombast  of  the  malignant  moralists,  the  obtuse 
and  snivelling  taradiddle,  the  absurd  hogwallowing,  the 
balderdash,  the  pishposh,  the  abracadabra,  the  hocus- 
pocus,  the  blaa-blaa  and  cavortings  of  all  whoopers 
and  snorters,  of  the  rabble-rousers,  bogus  rosicrucians, 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  77 

ku-kluxers,  well-greased  tear-squeezers,  parlor  pundits 
and  boob-bumpers. 

"The  quackery,  hugger-mugger  idealism,  and  bump 
tiousness  of  a  so-called  democratic  heaven  is  pathetic. 
Worse,  it  is  grotesque.  In  the  course  of  a  mere  score 
of  years  we  have  been  lamentably  intrigued  by  a  dozen 
messianic  delusions;  we  have  allowed  ourselves  to  be 
caressed  impartially  and  in  turn  by  the  shibboleths  of 
Tolstoy,  Pastor  Wagner,  Drs.  Palladino,  Maeterlinck, 
Metchnikoff,  Bergson,  the  Emanuel  Movement, 
Eucken,  Veblen,  Dalcroze,  Isadora  Duncan,  Tagore, 
Freud  and  half  a  hundred  other  visiting  boudoir- 
swamis,  studio-psychics,  jitney  messiahs.  .  .  .  We  are 
constantly  being  bussed  and  bemused  by  the  hope 
lessly  mediocre.  We  have  a  prodigious  appetite  to  be 
fooled,  tricked,  bamboozled  and  double-crossed,  in 
short,  to  be  ignominiously  but  thoroughly  horns- 
woggled.  Hence,  we  swallow,  with  unconcealed  gusto, 
the  pious  garglings  of  the  Sunday  afternoon  sentimen 
talists,  the  windy  platitudes  and  hollow  stuff  of  any 
gaudy  romanticism  as  long  as  it  is  soothing.  Hence, 
the  local  peasantry  grows  more  and  more  inclined  to 
the  cackle  and  clowning  of  every  cheap- jack,  punchi- 
nello,  mountebank  and  booby,  and  hence  sinks  in  its 
own  soughs  of  booming  and  asinine  fol-de-rol.  The 
boobery  has  a  positive  genius  for  scorning  whatever 
is  genuine  or  first-rate.  It  holds  beauty  to  be  unbusi- 


78  Heavens 

ness-like,  decorative,  distracting  and  hence  immoral; 
its  anaesthesia  to  the  arts  is  invariably  one  hundred 
percent.  It  is  as  unintelligent  as  a  senator  or  a  boy- 
orator  fresh  from  the  chautauquas;  it  is  the  chief  actor 
in  a  bawdy  farce,  a  seborrhea  on  the  face  of  Nature, 
a  gawky  villager  who  sees  Love  only  as  the  divine 
Shadchen,  a  tragic  dill-pickle,  a  snitcher,  a  smut-hound, 
in  brief,  an  ass.  Consider  the  way  it  has  consistently 
lauded  the  adenoidal  tenors  of  American  literature  and 
has  shut  the  door  in  the  faces  of  such  rare  but  in 
dubitable  genii  as  Poe,  Hearn,  Whitman  and  the  seri 
ous  side  of — God  save  the  Mark! — Twain.  Consider 
the  reception  accorded  Dreiser's  'Sister  Carrie.'  Or 
Norris's  'McTeague.'  Or  Conrad's  'Heart  of  Dark 
ness.'  Or  Sandburg's  'Chicago  Poems.'  The  thing 
is  incredible,  stupendous,  fantastic,  unglaublich,  gar 
gantuan,  kolossal — but  nevertheless  true." 

"And  what,"  Kennicott  rejoined  with  more  than  the 
suspicion  of  a  sneer,  "are  you  going  to  do  about  it?" 

"First,"  replied  Mencken,  "I  shall  pay  a  visit  to  the 
presiding  Stammvater  and  lay  before  him  my  plans  for 
draining  the  body  politic  of  its  virulent  glycosuria. 
Next  I  will  broach — somewhat  gingerly — a  scheme  to 
plough  through  the  ranks,  and  weed  out  all  those  who 
suffer  from  comstockery,  megalomania,  right-thinking, 
the  itch-to-reform,  chemical  purity,  belief  in  the  soul  or 
share,  in  any  way,  the  bovine  honor  and  complacency 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  79 

of  the  herd.  I  have  various  suggestions  as  to  a  sweet 
and  soulful  euthanasia.  I,  myself,  once  proposed 
wholesale  lynchings,  volunteering  to  string  up  half  the 
community  of  a  small  town  in  Maryland  at  the  local 
opera  house  and  sell  tickets  to  the  other  half  at  five 
dollars  per  capita.  It  promised  to  be  a  profitable  ven 
ture  and  a  good  show.  ...  I  throw  out  the  sugges 
tion  and  pass  on.  Next,  I  will  exhibit  a  machine,  de 
signed  by  myself  and  Bernard  Shaw  out  of  Nietzsche, 
which  will  effectually  apply  the  slapstick  to  the  pos 
terior  elevation  of  poets,  cabots,  Shakespearian  cuties, 
Southerners  and  other  such  pretty  fellows  and,  as  the 
late  General  Grant  has  it  somewhere,  give  them  a  kick 
in  the  kishgiss.  For  one  thing,  I  will  make  everybody 
listen  to  daily  concerts  confined  to  the  quartets  of 
Papa  Haydn,  the  lieder  of  Richard  Strauss,  the  nine 
symphonies  of  the  immortal  Ludwig.  For  another,  I 
will  show  them  that  Man,  for  all  his  flashy  chivalry 
which  invariably  bites  in  the  clinches,  is  capable  of 
appreciating  fine  letters,  the  sensuous  ebb  and  flow  of 
syllables,  the  beautiful  if  polygamous  marriage  of 
nouns  and  adjectives,  verbs,  adverbs,  prepositions,  pro 
nouns,  exclamations,  articles,  participles,  infinitives, 
possessives,  conjunctions.  I  will  read  them  the  files 
of  The  Smart  Set  and  strike  a  responsive  chord  of  Eb 
major  in  the  dumb  breasts  of  janitors,  soda-clerks, 
mouzhiks,  Methodists,  book-salesmen,  officers  of  the 


80  Heavens 

Elks  and  duly  elected  members  of  the  House  of  Rep 
resentatives.  Even  the  college  professors  will  feel  a 
stir  of  life.  I  do  not  say  that  I  can  pump  up  sufficient 
energy  to  destroy,  at  one  blow,  all  the  malaises  and 
bugaboos  that  inhibit  these  provinces.  I  do  say  that, 
once  my  campaign  is  in  full  swing,  I  will  tear  off  the 
tin  halos  and  false  whiskers  of  the  Puritan — " 

He  got  no  further.  The  last  word  seemed  to  inflame 
his  listeners  with  amazing  vigor.  Although  a  unanim 
ity  of  opinion  was  evident,  each  one  was  so  eager  to 
pay  his  tribute  of  invectives  that  the  air  thickened 
with  fragments  like  .  .  .  "glib  dunderheads"  .  .  . 
"pious  hypocrites"  .  .  .  "You've  got  a  Puritan  com 
plex  yourself."  .  .  .  "filthy  and  blackmailing  crusa 
ders — God  save  us  all!"  .  .  .  "drown  them  in  cold 
tea — in  Puritannic  acid!"  .  .  .  "Consider,  also  .  .  ." 
.  .  .  "To  the  Puritan  all  things  are  impure!" 

The  crowd  was  growing  larger,  the  exclamations 
louder.  Mencken,  banging  a  bass-drum  which  he  had 
hidden  beneath  his  overcoat,  began  whistling  the 
Marche  des  "Davidsbundler"  contre  les  Philistins. 
Carol  Kennicott  and  Felix  Fay  unfurled  banners  with 
screaming  slogans  while  Hugh  McVey  tore  off  his  jacket 
to  display  a  flaming  red  undershirt.  A  shot  was  fired 
— then  others.  Possibly,  they  were  blank  cartridges; 
but  I  was  taking  no  chances.  "If  this  is  Heaven,"  I 
gasped  to  my  companion,  "give  me — " 


The  Heaven  of  Mean  Streets  81 

But  my  mentor  had  vanished.  My  heart  lost  sev 
eral  beats  before  I  saw  him.  He  was  slipping  out  the 
back-door.  I  agreed  with  him.  He  was  an  excellent 
guide. 


FIVE    PREVIEWS 


A  Note  on  Previewing 

A  PREVIEW  is,  as  its  name  implies,  the  opposite  of  a 
review.  It  is,  in  short,  an  anticipatory  consideration 
of  an  (as  yet)  uncreated  piece  of  work.  A  review  is, 
by  the  very  necessity  of  its  prefix,  a  backward  glance 
over  tilled  fields;  the  preview,  gazing  ahead  at  still 
unbroken  soil,  is  essentially  far  more  forward-looking. 

Previewing,  in  spite  of  its  possibilities,  has  had  few 
practitioners.  And  this  is  strange,  for  its  advantages 
are  obvious.  For  one  thing,  no  one  can  accuse  the 
previewer  of  being  a  merely  destructive  critic;  his 
creation  is  implicit  in  his  criticism.  For  another 
thing,  he  never  need  skim  the  publisher's  note  or  the 
first  chapters  of  a  book  before  formulating  his  theories 
of  the  volume — he  need  not  even  confine  himself  to  the 
printed  page;  his  range  of  interest  is  not  cribbed, 
cabined  or  confined  by  anything  but  the  limits  of  his 
imagination.  A  further  advantage  is  the  previewer's 
freedom  from  any  code  or  canon  of  critical  conduct. 
He  need  fear  neither  ethical  indiscretions  or  legal 
libels;  the  unwritten  word  is  his  unwritten  law. 

What  a  library  these  unwritten  books  would  make! 
No  previewer's  astral  shelves  would  be  complete  with- 

85 


86  Five  Previews 

out  George  Moore's  privately  conceived  and  privately 
printed  version  of  Paul  and  Virginia,  G.  K.  Chester 
ton's  religious  romance  of  a  billiard-room  called  The 
Ball  and  the  Cue,  an  anthology  of  The  World's  Worst 
Poetry,  edited  by  H.  L.  Mencken,  a  collection  of 
angry  reactionary  essays  on  liberalism  by  Paul  Elmer 
More,  entitled  New  Republicans  and  Sinners,  an  ex 
haustive  appreciation,  The  Art  of  David  Belasco  by 
the  denunciatory  George  Jean  Nathan,  What  I  Owe 
Henry  by  Fanny  Hurst,  President  Harding  by  Lytton 
Strachey.  ...  An  ardent  previewer,  by  the  very 
force  of  his  feelings  and  the  intensity  of  his  fore 
casts,  may  actually  will  such  books  into  being.  It  is 
in  the  hope  of  stimulating  such  effort — of  quickening,  as 
it  were,  this  stunted  branch  of  literature — that  the  fol 
lowing  five  previews  are  presented  without  further 
protest  or  preamble. 


WOODROVIAN  POETRY 1 

IT  was  a  happy  though  somewhat  belated  thought 
to  bring  together  the  eighteen  poets  here  assembled 
and  to  present  their  latest  work  not  only  as  a  revelation 
to  the  new  world  but  as  a  challenge  to  the  old.  Obvi 
ously  taking  its  cue  from  the  various  anthologies  that 
have  been  coming  over  from  England  and,  more  di 
rectly,  from  The  Lloyd-Georgians  (the  left  wing  se 
cession  of  a  group  well-known  in  the  late  'teens),  this 
volume  aims  to  do  for  contemporary  Americans  what 
has  already  been  done  for  our  transatlantic  cousins. 
But  the  anonymous  editor  is  far  more  catholic.  He 
writes,  in  his  Prefatory  Note,  "The  object  of  Wood- 
rovian  Poetry  is  to  give,  first,  a  survey  of  the  work 
written  in  the  last  two  years  by  some  of  our  more  au 
thoritative  poets;  second,  to  show,  by  its  very  differ 
ences  in  taste,  form,  temper  and  subjects,  the  varie 
gated  vigor  of  the  most  athletic  of  our  arts."  The 
editor's  catholicity  is  illustrated  more  sharply  by  his 
inclusions.  Thus  Theodosia  Garrison  appears  alpha 
betically  between  Robert  Frost  and  Orrick  Johns.  The 

1  Woodrovian  Poetry.  A  Biennial.  Washington,  D.  C.  The 
Printers',  Proofreaders'  and  Publishers'  Soviet;  Branch  16. 

87 


88  Five  Previews 

easy-selling  patterns  of  Berton  Braley  follow  the  three 
involuted  tone-poems  by  Conrad  Aiken  and  precede 
the  cloisonne  fantasies  of  Maxwell  Bodenheim.  "It  is 
not  intended,"  argues  the  editor,  "to  place  emphasis  on 
any  particular  group  or  tendency.  On  the  contrary, 
if  an  honest  appraisal  of  national  culture  is  desired, 
one  must  receive  the  popular  with  the  same  enthusi 
asm  that,  in  these  times,  one  extends  to  the  bizarre; 
the  contributors  to  The  Saturday  Evening  Post  are 
surely  no  less  representative  or  racy  than  those  of  The 
Littlest  Review." 

The  volume  itself  is,  as  might  be  expected,  a  strange 
medley  of  achievement  and  mere  effort;  it  is  by  turns 
"different"  and  indifferent.  Turn  to  the  twenty  pages 
allotted  to  Vachel  Lindsay.  The  first  four  poems  are 
in  his  most  metallic  and  moralizing  vein;  I  doubt 
whether  he  has  ever  written  anything  less  worthy  of 
print  and  paper  than  "The  Poison  Weed"  which  is 
dedicated  to  The  Springfield  Chapter  of  the  Anti-To 
bacco  League.  But  the  other  pages  give  us  this  lusty 
singer  in  his  best  and  most  whimsical  voice.  His  rol 
licking  Afro-American  version  of  The  Song  of  Songs 
entitled  "The  Shimmying  Shulamite"  is  only  surpassed 
by  that  highly-colored  chant  which  concludes  his  group, 
"The  Noah's  Ark  Blues."  This  poem  contains  Lind 
say's  three  R's,  his  own  blend  of  Rhyme,  Ragtime  and 
Religion.  But  a  new  ingredient  is  added — a  restraint 


Woodrovian  Poetry  89 

that  gives  these  lines  the  fire  of  a  cause  and  the  inev 
itability  of  a  nursery-rhyme.  The  mechanics  are  even 
simpler  than  those  of  "The  Congo."  Obviously  in 
spired  by  a  trip  to  Coney  Island  with  The  Russian 
Ballet,  it  begins  with  variations  on  the  old  jingle: — 

The  animals  went  in  two  by  two, 
(Good-bye,  my  lover,  good-bye.) 

The  camel,  the  cat  and  the  kangaroo; 
(Good-bye,  my  lover,  good-bye.) 

But  the  first  section,  with  its  broadly  humorous 
catalog,  is  followed  by  a  wilder  and  more  fanciful 
flight.  In  this  part,  the  souls  of  the  animals  reveal 
themselves  and,  in  Lindsay's  not  too  subtle  symbolism, 
become  identified  with  their  human  prototypes.  It 
is  a  glorious  melange  of  color,  motion  and  metaphysics. 
The  snake's  hiss  makes  a  pattern  that  is  crossed  by  the 
lion's  roar;  the  Chinese  nightingales  cry  with  a  bar 
baric  sweetness  against  a  background  of  twittering  and 
purring. 

And  hiss,  sang  the  cobras, 

Hiss  .  .  .  hisss  .  .  .  hissss.  .  .  . 

The  craven-hearted  gander  surprised  the  salamander 

By  turning  round  and  hissing  in  a  dozen  different  keys. 

Hiss.  .  .  .  Hisss.  .  .  .  Hisssss.  .  .  . 

The  polar-bears,  the  bisons,  the  buffaloes  and  bees 


90  Five  Previews 

Began  a  mighty  bumbling, 
And  roaring  and  rumbling, 
And  fumbling  and  snoring, 
And  eagles,  tired  of  soaring, 
Came  tumbling  to  their  knees. 
Rrrrrrrr.  ,      .  Hisss.  .      .  Rrrrrrrr. 


The  end  of  the  poem  is  even  more  surprising.  The 
apotheosis  comes  suddenly  in  the  very  midst  of  this 
lyric  turbulence;  a  glorification  that  turns  the  clangor 
to  a  burst  of  ecstasy. 

Through  the  honied  heavens  I  could  see  them  drive 

All  the  buzzing  planets  to  a  golden  hive; 

Bees  and  bears  among  the  stars  were  burning  constellations, 

Lighting  up  the  jungles  and  the  new-born  nations. 

Every  swooping  eagle  was  a  flaming  sun, 

Shining  like  a  hero  when  the  fight  is  won  .  .  . 

And,  above  the  ramparts  of  The  Holy  Wall, 

The  White  Dove  of  Beauty  shone  upon  them  all. 

Miss  Lowell's  contributions  are  even  more  uneven 
in  quality.  Craftsmen  will  undoubtedly  be  interested 
in  her  experiments  in  post-Eurasian  monorhymes,  but 
the  unprofessional  poetry-lover  will  find  little  to  excite 
him  in  these  metronomic  rhythms.  Similarly  puzzling 
is  her  interpretation  of  Prokofieff 's  Grotesque  for  Two 
Bassoons,  Concertina  and  Snare-drums  which  Miss 
Lowell  has  rendered  ain  the  high-pitched  timbre  of 


Woodrovian  Poetry  91 

the  neo-Javanese."     It  is  not  always  easy  to  follow 
such  intricately  embroidered  lines  as: 

A  sulphur-yellow  chord  of  the  eleventh 

Twitches  aside  the  counterpane. 

Blasts  of  a  dead  chrysanthemum, 

Blur. 

Whispers  of  mauve  in  a  sow's  ear ; 

Snort  of  a  daffodil, 

Bluster  of  zinnias  hurtling  through  nasal  silences, 

Steeplejack  in  a  lace  cassock 

Pirouetting  before  a  fly-blown  moon. 

Soap-bubble  groans  where  the  wheezing  planets 

Abandon  the  jig. 

But  Miss  Lowell  is  not  always  so  cryptic.  The  six 
short  poems  in  contrapolyphonic  verprose  (grouped 
under  the  appropriate  title  "Mice  and  Mandragora") 
are  brilliant  examples  of  her  staccato  idiom.  I  quote 
the  first  of  these. 

WALLFLOWER  TO  A  MOONBEAM 

In  the  pause 

When  you  first  came 

The  stillness  rang  with  the  clashing  of  wine-cups. 

You  spoke — 

And  jonquil-trumpets  blew  dizzy  bacchanals. 

You  smiled — 

And  drunken  laughter 

Spilled  over  the  edges  of  the  gauffered  night. 


92  Five  Previews 

Now  you  have  gone, 

The  dusk  has  lost  its  sparkle; 

My  days  are  trickling  water, 

Tepid  and  tasteless. 

But  I  am  no  longer  thirsty. 


Most  of  the  other  poets  seem  to  be  marking  time. 
James  Oppenheim's  extended  "Psalm  for  the  New  Cos 
mos"  gives  one  the  same  impression  that  we  have  al 
ready  received  from  his  later  work — a  vision  of  Je 
hovah  taking  lessons  in  psychoanalysis  from  Walt 
Whitman.  These  are  the  first  notes  of  the  opening 
chorus: 

Yes,  I  say,  to  the  dance  of  the  stars! 

Yes  to  the  sexual  warmth  of  our  mother,  the  sun; 

Yes,  I  shout,  to  the  many- voiced  longing  which  is  life ; 

Yes,  I  declare,  to  Creation! 

Who  shall  publish  the  dark  heart  of  Chaos, 

And  lay  bare  the  secrets  of  Night? 

Edgar  Lee  Masters^  noble  "Ode  to  Prohibition" 
(dedicated  to  William  Jennings  Bryan)  has  all  this  au 
thor's  early  fire  but  it  is  marred  in  places  by  the  hor 
tatory  enthusiasm  of  the  recent  convert.  William 
Rose  Benet  continues  to  commute  between  Hell  Gate 
and  Helicon  on  his  four-cylinder  unicorn.  Willard 
Wattles  of  Kansas  is  a  welcome  addition  (alphabet!- 


Woodrovian  Poetry  93 

cally,  at  least)  to  the  line  of  famous  W.  W.'s  that  in 
cludes  William  Wordsworth,  Walt  Whitman,  William 
Watson  and  Woodrow  Wilson.  Theodosia  Garrison's 
lyrics  still  read  as  if  they  were  composed  on  an  auto 
matic  cash-register.  Mr.  Braley,  it  is  evident,  has 
availed  himself  of  the  Improved  Graphomotor  attach 
ment  for  Tired  Typewriters.  E.  A.  Robinson,  having 
exhausted  the  Arthurian  legends,  has  gone  back  to  the 
fall  of  Troy.  Louis  Untermeyer  is  still  loudly  and 
repetitively  amazed  at  the  liveliness  of  life,  and  John 
Hall  Wheelock  is  still  musically  enchanted  with  the 
loveliness  of  death. 

Carl  Sandburg  is  the  only  one  of  the  sixteen  who, 
while  retaining  his  own  voice,  has  added  some  unsus 
pected  quality  to  it.  Few  of  his  poems  will  rank 
higher  than  his  "Nine  Pieces  from  Sappho"  which 
Sandburg  has  rendered  into  modern  Chicago  speech. 
Not  since  Wharton's  collection,  has  any  one  done  so 
much  to  revitalize  what  Palgrave  called  "the  sweet  la 
ment  of  Lesbian  love."  Sandburg  avoids  the  pitfalls 
of  sentimentality  which  trapped  Merivale  and  Sy- 
monds;  Sappho,  in  his  versions,  is  as  throbbing  and 
breathless  as  any  girl  late  for  her  appointment  on 
State  Street.  Particularly  characteristic  is  his  treat 
ment  of  the  second  ode  in  Sapphic  metre,  the  one  which 
is  even  better  known  in  Catullus's  imitation.  This  is 
Sandburg's  rendition: 


94  Five  Previews 

I'm  telling  you. 

That  man  who  trails  along  with  you 
Is  better  off  than  the  governor  of  Idaho. 
He  sits  close 

And  hears  you  laughing— a  giggler,  God  knows,  a  gig 
gler— 

And  his  troubles  are  as  gone  as  yesterday, 
And  the  past  is  a  scuttle  of  cinders. 

That's  what  I  hanker  after. 

But  when  I  get  one  slant  at  you, 

I  can't  speak. 

Dust  gets  in  my  throat; 

My  tongue  breaks  down  in  jabberings; 

The  flame  in  my  right  wrist  and  the  fires  in  my  left  wrist 
run  along  my  arms  and  legs. 

My  ears  ring;  I  go  blind;  drops  come  out  on  my  fore 
head;  I  shake  all  over.  I'm  afraid  of  going  nuts. 

Get  this. 

I  want  to  chance  everything. 

I  want  to  say  there's  a  place  out  here  with  potato- 
blossoms  and  young  frogs  calling  and  nobody  home 
but  a  red  sun  spilling  hallelujahs  over  the  prairie. 

I  want  to  dance  and  sing:  Shine  All  Over  God's  Heaven. 

But  something  chokes  me. 

I  can't  act  like  I  used  to. 

I  go  yellow  as  grass  when  there's  no  rain  in  July; 

All  in  ...  ab-so-lute-ly  all  in  ...  no  use,  boy,  no  use. 
I'm  telling  you. 


Woodrovlan  Poetry  95 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  why  Robert  Frost  is  rep 
resented  by  only  one  poem,  and  that  one  ("The 
Dried-up  Spring")  obviously  a  product  of  his  middle 
or  Franconian  period.  Perhaps  it  is  because  of  Frost's 
distrust  of  groups — particularly  his  own.  Or  perhaps 
he  himself  is  the  anonymous  editor.  Whatever  the  rea 
son,  and  in  spite  of  other  omissions  (the  air  around 
Washington  Square  will  be  a  violent  cobalt  with  the 
indignations  of  Alfred  Kreymborg's  adherents!),  the 
collection  will  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  fifty-seven 
"unique  and  notable  books  of  the  year."  In  its  chaste 
binding  of  red,  white  and  blue,  it  should  appeal  to  both 
the  intelligent  student  of  native  art  and  the  reader  of 
the  editorials  of  the  New  York  Times.  Whatever  else 
the  Woodrovian  era  has  lost,  it  has  found  its  singers. 


THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  VERSE1 

IT  was  bound  to  come.  And  here,  a  solid  four  hun 
dred  and  fifty  page  royal  octavo,  it  is.  Professor 
Harper  Grenville's  calmly-entitled  The  Manufacture 
of  Verse  is  not  so  much  a  book  as  it  is  a  calculated 
literary  explosion;  an  astounding  combination  of  man 
ual,  pattern-maker  and  hand-book  containing  Two 
Hundred  Secrets  of  The  Trade.  Professor  Grenville, 
who  has  returned  after  a  sojourn  in  these  nitid  states 
to  his  chair  at  Monrovia  University,  begins  with  an 
ingenuous  foreword  in  which  he  submits  the  proposi 
tion,  revolutionary  in  its  simplicity,  that.  .  .  .  But  let 
him  speak  for  himself. 

"Before  returning  to  Africa,"  begins  the  professor, 
"I  spent  four  sabbatical  years  reading  the  poetry  in 
every  magazine  from  The  Atlantic  Monthly  to  The 
Ginger  Jar;  attending  (so  far  as  geography  would  per 
mit)  every  meeting  of  every  Poetry  Society;  studying, 
in  short,  the  entire  problem  of  supply  and  demand  in 

1  The  Manufacture  of  Verse  ;  including  a  Preface  on  Weights 
and  Measures,  a  Rhyming  Dictionary  for  Vers  Librists,  and  a 
Three  Weeks'  Course  for  Beginners.  By  Harper  Grenville, 
Litt.D.,  Monrovia,  Liberia.  Printed  by  the  Author. 

97 


98  Five  Previews 

what,  as  far  as  America  is  concerned,  has  grown  to  be 
not  only  a  major  occupation  but  an  essential  industry. 
And  I  was  struck,  first  of  all,  by  the  shocking  inef 
ficiency  and  waste  in  the  manufacture  as  well  as  in  the 
marketing  of  this  staple  product.  What  surprised  me 
most  was  the  utterly  unsystematic  method  of  assem 
bling,  the  useless  duplication,  the  uncoordinated  and 
almost  unconscious  similarity.  Surely  a  country  run 
by  time-clocks,  Babson  reports,  memory  courses,  con 
servation  committees  and  the  Taylor  System  must  real 
ize  that  its  poetry  cannot  be  allowed  to  lag  behind 
in  the  old  haphazard,  'write-as-the-mood-seizes-you' 
gait!  Something  is  needed  for  the  double  purpose  of 
standardizing  quality  and  speeding  up  production.  It 
is  in  the  hope  of  filling  this  only  too  evident  need  that 
the  following  chapters  have  been  prepared." 

Thus  Professor  Grenville's  stark  little  prologue. 
Without  pausing  for  breath,  he  goes  into  action  on  the 
first  page  of  the  first  chapter,  which  deals  with  Maga 
zine  Verse  and  is  brusquely  entitled  At  the  Usual  Rate 
per  Line. 

"It  is  not  too  late,  even  in  an  age  of  conquering 
ideals,"  he  begins,  "to  be  realistic.  For  better  or  for 
worse,  the  magazine  sonnet,  the  rotund  meditation,  the 
sentimental  fillers  exist.  What  is  more,  they  persist. 
There  is  a  market  for  these  wares;  they  live  because 
people  like  them,  because  there  is  a  genuine  demand 


The  Manufacture  of  Verse  99 

for  such  merchandise.  Obviously,  our  duty  is  to  show 
how  to  meet  that  demand  without  the  fumblings  and 
faint  strivings  for  originality  that  have  characterized 
the  past."  Whereupon  the  Professor  begins  to  cata 
log,  to  codify,  to  quote.  Great  names  are  thrown  about 
with  a  magnificent  nonchalance;  nobody  escapes.  The 
present  reviewer  wishes  he  had  space  to  reprint  Pro 
fessor  Grenville's  analysis  of  "that  cornerstone  of 
journalistic  prosody,  The  Lush  and  Rhetorical  Son 
net,"  regretting  that  the  readers  must  content  them 
selves  with  the  learned  doctor's  conclusions. 

"The  fourteenth  line"  [I  am  detaching  a  segment 
from  page  21]  "should  always  be  written  first;  the 
first  line  next.  The  rest  is  mere  stuffing.  Of  late 
there  has  been  a  tendency  to  build  sonnets  around  the 
third  or  fourth  line,  on  the  theory  that  editors  never 
get  as  far  as  the  last  line.  This  is  an  innovation  which, 
in  spite  of  its  plausibility,  I  must  condemn.  For  one 
thing,  it  tends  to  deviate  from  that  conformity  which, 
as  I  have  pointed  out,  is  the  very  goal  at  which  we  are 
aiming.  Nothing  should  be  done  to  disturb  the  liquid 
flow  of  a  thought  that  begins  nowhere  and,  after  mean 
dering  through  fourteen  well-worn  grooves,  ends  there. 
Vague  abstractions  and  vaguer  'wings  that  beat/  'sil 
vern  melodies/  alliterative  generalities  and  archaic  em 
bellishments  like  'I  wis/  'hark/  'fain/  etc.,  will  go  far 
to  fill  in  the  gap  between  the  first  phrase  of  the  octave 


IOO  Five  Previews 

and  the  last  rhyme  of  the  sestet.    Here,  by  Clinton 
Scollard,  is  an  almost  perfect  example: 

AT  THE  VERGE  OF  MARCH 

It  is  not  ever  that  the  outer  ear 

Bears  us  the  joy  for  which  our  hearts  are  fain; 

Sometimes  we  sense  the  music  of  the  rain 
Ere  its  first  silvern  melody  we  hear. 
Sometimes  we  feel  the  grieving  sea  is  near 

Before  we  hark  its  never  silent  strain; 

Sometimes  we  mark  the  veering  of  the  vane 
Ere  the  wind-trumpets  sound  their  clamour  clear. 

So  now  I  am  inscrutably  aware 

Of  moving  wings  that  beat  against  the  day, 
Of  swift  migrations  stirring  from  afar; 

The  clouds  betray  strange  murmurings  in  the  air, 
Breathings  seep  up  from  out  the  frozen  clay, 
And  there  are  whisperings  from  the  twilight  star. 

"But,"  continues  our  guide,  "there  is  another  type 
of  sonnet  which  requires  less  care  and  which  yields 
even  more  gratifying  results.  And  that  is  the  Mouth- 
Filling  and  Mystic  Sonnet.  During  the  war  there  was 
a  noticeable  slump  in  these  goods  but,  with  the  in 
creased  popularity  of  spiritualism,  they  have  risen 
steadily  in  favor.  They  can  be  manufactured  in 
quantity  with  the  aid  of  the  ordinary,  domestic  ouija 
board.  Or,  if  a  slower  but  somewhat  more  satisfactory 


The  Manufacture  of  Verse  io: 

method  is  desired,  they  can  be  turned  out  in  this  fash 
ion:  Collect  and  arrange  a  score  of  hyper-literary,  re 
sounding  and  (preferably)  obsolete  words — words  like 
'nenuphar,'  'thrid,'  'levin,'  'rathe,'  'immemorial,' 
'palimpsest.'  Scatter  these  through  the  pattern,  leav 
ing  space  for  rhymes.  Use  any  good  dictionary  and 
season  to  suit.  An  almost  endless  variety  can  thus  be 
produced,  of  which  the  following  is  a  sample — a  com 
posite  of  twenty-three  different  variations  of  this  pop 
ular  model: 

RESURGAM 

Athwart  the  hectic  sunset's  plangent  crown, 

The  rathe  and  daedal  moon  is  vaguely  seen; 

The  ghosts  of  twilight  strow  the  skies  with  green 

And  listlessly  the  evening  sinks  adown. 

The  driven  day  forgets  its  furrowed  frown 

And  shimmers  in  the  frail  and  xanthic  sheen; 

Life's  banners  ope' — the  shades  porphyrogene, 

Dank  and  disheveled,  clutch  the  night — and  drown.  .  .  . 

So  did  I  once  behold  Love's  gyving  spells 
Flashing  from  amaranthine  star  to  star ; 
While,  from  the  limbo  of  forgotten  hells, 
The  immarcescible  passions  surged  afar.  .  .  . 
What  fulgid  lure  awoke  the  asphodels? 
Behind  the  gibbering  night — what  avatar?" 

I  skip,  with  ill-concealed  impatience,  to  page  425 
and  Professor  Grenville's  instructive  remarks  on  Capi- 


IO2  Five  Previews 

talizing  Beauty  with  a  Capital  B.  "What  is  more 
gratifying  to  the  modern  reader,  harassed  by  machin 
ery  and  newspaper  editorials,  than  a  thumping  glori 
fication  of  the  past?  By  that  I  do  not  mean  the  recent 
past,  which  has  been  dealt  with  in  a  previous  chapter 
and  which  finds  its  climactic  cri  de  cceur  in  refrains 
like: 

And  it's  oh  for  the  hills  of  Ida,  and  the  sigh  of  the 
Zuyder  Zee! 

"I  refer  to  the  sonorous  stanzas  which,  with  a  de 
lightful  ambiguity,  mingle  epochs,  geography,  and  his 
torical  land-marks  in  a  list  of  confused  but  dazzling 
splendor.  It  is  unnecessary  to  analyze  or  even  de 
fine  this  impressive  type.  Every  student  acquainted 
with  the  rudiments  of  scientific  management  and  ma 
chine  piece-work  will  be  able  to  construct  love-poems 
as  resonant,  high-pitched  and,  purple-patched  as  this 
free-hand  improvisation: 

THE  PAGAN  HEART 

Here,  in  Egyptian  night,  you  hang 
Above  me,  sphinx  without  a  home; 

Whiter  than  Helen  as  she  sang 

And  burned  the  golden  isles  of  Rome. 


The  Manufacture  of  Verse  103 

The  breath  of  perfumed  Sidon  slips 
From  your  Greek  body's  wizardry; 

Persepolis  is  on  your  lips, 

And  your  bright  hair  is  Nineveh. 

Enchantress,  you  have  drawn  upon 
The  world's  dream  and  its  old  desire — 

The  brazen  pomps  of  Babylon, 
The  purple  panoply  of  Tyre!" 


It  is  impossible  to  give  the  fine  flavour  of  this  vol 
ume  by  meagre  quotations.  It  is  equally  impossible 
to  quote  it  in  toto.  And  yet  one  cannot  resist  tearing 
a  fragment  from  Professor  Grenville's  advice  concern 
ing  The  English  Lyric.  "By  the  English  lyric,  I  mean 
that  type  of  song  which  (in  contradistinction  to  that 
written  in  the  American  idiom)  is  sought  after  chiefly 
in  the  United  States.  Whether  the  pattern  is  vernal 
(see  Spring  Style  No.  53)  or  merely  rustic  and  rumi 
native  (vide  Songs  of  the  Open  Road,  designs  62  to 
225),  all  one  needs  is  a  small  but  select  vocabulary 
ready  for  substitution.  The  proper  air  is  given  and 
the  effect  achieved  by  changing  the  common  American 
blackbird  to  the  poetically  Georgian  'merle/  the  lark 
to  the  'laverock/  song-thrush  to  'mavis/  wood  to 
'wold/  and  liberally  strewing  the  rest  of  any  outdoor 
jingle  (see  passages  on  Wanderlust,  Broad-Highway, 
Vagbondia,  etc.)  with  references  to  'gorse/  'heather/ 


104  Five  Previews 

'furze,'  'whin/  and  so  on.  ...  The  following  intro 
ductory  stanzas  are  an  approximation  of  this  standard 
and  always  effective  design: 

LAVEROCKS 

The  winter  sun  has  run  its  wavering  course, 
The  giddy  mavis  tries  its  vernal  wing; 

While  from  the  green  heart  of  the  radiant  gorse 
The  laverocks  sing. 

High  on  the  moor  the  blossomy  heather  wakes 
The  gillyflower  laughing  in  the  furze; 

And,  in  the  bramble  thickets  and  the  brakes, 
Old  magic  stirs. 

Ah,  love,  could  we  but  once  more  be  a  part 
Of  May!    In  tune  with  bracken  and  with  ling! 

Then,  from  the  flaming  thickets  of  my  heart, 
Laverocks  would  sing!" 

It  would  be  a  pleasure  to  go  all  the  way  with  Pro 
fessor  Grenville.  But  that  pleasure  must  be  reserved 
for  the  student,  the  apprentice,  and  the  eight-hour-day 
versifiers  rather  than  the  casual  reader.  There  are 
times  when  the  author,  especially  in  his  efforts  to  re 
duce  the  number  of  easy-selling  models,  grows  a  trifle 
doctrinaire;  there  are  other  times  when  one  almost  sus 
pects  him  of  letting  his  tongue  slip  toward  his  cheek, 
as  when,  in  the  passage  on  How  to  Achieve  Glamour, 


The  Manufacture  of  Verse  105 

he  writes:  "Inversion  is  the  surest  method;  the  fur 
ther  away  one  gets  from  the  spoken  language,  the 
nearer  one  is  to  that  mode  of  stilted  speech  which  even 
the  comic  weeklies  recognize  as  poetry — a  masterpiece 
of  its  kind  being  the  first  two  lines  of  a  poem  by  Mr. 
Louis  V.  Ledoux: 

'A  moonlit  mist  the  valley  fills, 
Though  rides  unseen  herself  the  moon/  " 

In  spite  of  the  few  flies  in  Professor  Grenville's 
preparation  of  the  "divine  emollient,"  one — and  I  dare 
say,  a  great  many  more — must  be  grateful  to  him. 
Such  chapters  as  Rhyme  Without  Reason,  Archaism's 
Artful  Aid,  Home-Grown  Exotics,  will  do  much  to  help 
the  latter-day  minstrel  up  the  slopes  of  Parnassus  in 
high. 

The  Manufacture  of  Verse  is,  in  every  sense,  a 
profitable  book.  At  least,  it  ought  to  be. 


THE  LOWEST  FORM  OF  WIT1 

THIS  curious  volume,  in  which  we  meet  with  so  many 
old  friends  that  it  is  as  if  we  had  suddenly  entered 
our  second  childhood,  is — let  me  be  brutally  candid 
— a  disappointment.  It  is,  as  all  admirers  of  Dr. 
Thyme  would  expect,  a  good  book.  But  it  could  have 
been  a  great  one.  The  eminent  psychoanalytical  lit 
terateur  was  about  to  plumb  strange  and  fascinating 
depths.  He  explored  the  entrance,  noted  (with  some 
what  too  scrupulous  detail)  the  surrounding  territory 
and  began  to  descend.  And  then  something  happened. 
The  search,  so  brilliantly  begun,  was  abandoned  for 
a  series  of  divagations,  circuitous  by-paths,  pleasant 
but  unprofitable  excursions  into  the  familiar.  Briefly, 
what  happened  was  this :  the  researcher  became  lost  in 
his  own  labyrinth;  the  critic  yielded  to  the  compiler. 
The  last  half  of  Dr.  Thyme's  thesis  (devoted  to  five 
hundred  classic  and  modern  puns)  is  a  lamentable 
falling-off  from  the  dazzling  promise  of  his  early  chap 
ters.  And  this  is  more  than  a  pity;  it  is  a  kind  of 


1  The  Pun,  Its  Principles,  Possibilities,  and  Purposes;  with 
500  examples  of  this  Popular  Pastime.  By  Justin  Thyme,  M.A. 
Scribbler  &  Bros.,  Boston. 

107 


Jo8  Five  Previews 

literary  tragedy.  For  we  have  not  yet  been  given — 
and  we  badly  need — what  this  book  pretends  to  be:  a 
careful  and  complete  analysis  of  the  pun,  its  princi 
ples,  its  purpose,  its  possibilities. 

No  one  disputes  the  definition:  "Punning  is  the 
lowest  form  of  wit."  The  axiom  is  universally  ap 
plauded,  quoted  and  upheld.  The  scorn  of  the  pun 
is  common  in  every  civilized  country  and — at  least 
so  it  seems  to  the  addicts  of  this  easily  acquired  habit 
— astonishingly  vindictive.  And  why?  The  reasons 
are  various;  every  critical  consultant  will  give  you 
equally  valid  (and  equally  contradictory)  explanations. 
H.  L.  Mencken  will  assure  you  that  the  hatred  of 
punning  lies  in  man's  inherent  Puritanism.  He  will 
discover  for  you  that  the  booboisie  as  well  as  the  vice- 
crusaders,  smut-hounds,  snitchers  and  members  of  the 
B.P.O.E.,  scent  something  pleasurable  in  the  practise 
and  hence  abhor  in  public  what  they  enjoy  in  private. 
He  will  convince  you  that  a  race  which  is  anaesthetic 
to  art  or  beauty  in  any  form  has  forced  itself  to  erect 
taboos  against  this  form  of  innocent  gratification  until 
it  has  become  a  refuge  of  the  cheap-jacks,  punchi- 
nellos,  chautauquans,  drummers  and  senators;  a  gaudy 
and  hollow  laugh-provoking  device.  .  .  .  Upton  Sin 
clair  will  tell  you,  with  great  heat  and  even  greater 
detail,  that  the  low  state  to  which  the  pun  has  fallen 
is  due  to  the  machinations  of  the  capitalist  press.  Sin- 


The  Lowest  Form  of  Wit  109 

clair  will  show  that  punning,  one  of  the  few  privileges 
of  the  labor  class,  has  been  reviled,  ridiculed  and  lied 
about  by  a  conspiracy  of  paid  professors,  city  editors 
and  rewrite  men.  He  will  tell,  as  proof  of  his  charges, 
how  a  pun  of  his,  after  being  quoted  in  the  afternoon 
edition  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  was  dropped 
in  subsequent  editions  and  never  printed  elsewhere, 
the  Associated  Press  refusing  to  carry  the  story  or  an 
swer  his  letters.  .  .  .  Dr.  Sigmund  Freud  will  explain 
the  aversion  to  the  pun  by  referring  you  to  his  tome 
on  Wit  and  Its  Relation  to  the  Unconscious;  establish 
ing  the  dark  nature  of  the  pleasure  mechanism,  the 
hidden  psychogenesis  of  humour  and  the  unsuspected 
nature  of  the  Lach-effekt.  Reinforced  by  Ueber- 
horst's  Das  Komische,  the  analyst  will  show  that  the 
desire  to  pun  is  basically  sexual,  a  form  of  exhibition 
ism  and  that,  therefore,  the  moral  censor  continually 
tries  to  repress  the  impulse.  He  will  proceed  to  show 
how  that  repression,  deepened  by  the  punster's  conse 
quent  inferiority  complex,  has  been  responsible  for 
many  delusions  and  neuroses.  .  .  .  And  so  on,  down 
the  list  of  critics,  interpreters  and  other  antagonists. 
But  no  one  has  ever  gone — or  thought  of  going — 
to  the  source.  Now  I,  for  instance,  am  an  inveterate 
punster.  I  know  the  causes.  And,  having  been 
shocked  at  the  violence  with  which  these  inoffensive 
plays  on  words  are  received,  I  have  evolved  a  theory 


HO  Five  Previews 

or,  to  be  finickingly  precise,  a  set  of  theories  about 
this  diversion  and  its  overwhelming  unpopularity. 

(1)  Punning  is  the  most  unsportsmanlike  of  indoor 
exercises.     It  is  a  game  that  can  only  be  played  by 
one.     Therefore  the  others,  who  cannot  join,  begin  by 
hating  the  solo  player's  jocular  (should  it  be  "jugu 
lar?")  vein  and  end  by  wishing  to  tear  him  limb  from 
lymph.     It  is  a  truism  that  no  one  ever  enjoys  any 
one's  puns  but  his  own.     The  exception  which  proves 
the  rule  is  G.  K.  Chesterton.     But  Chesterton  leads 
up  to  his  puns  so  gradually,  so  patiently  prepares  the 
dullest  reader  for  his  most  brilliant  explosion  that, 
by  the  time  the  piece  is  set  off,  the  reader,  anticipat 
ing  the  detonation,  has  acquired  almost  a  proprietary 
interest  and  actually  feels  the  pun  is,  with  a  little 
help  from  Chesterton,  his  own. 

(2)  Punning  is  an  illicit  form  of  verse.     K.  Fisher 
says  "a  pun  does  not  play  with  the  word  as  a  word, 
but  merely  as  a  sound."     In  its  effort  to  find  simi 
larities  of  vowels  and  differences  in  consonants,  it  is 
a  species  of  rhyme.     Therefore  those  who  dislike  the 
very  suggestion  of  poetry  (approximately  99  9/10%  of 
the  race)  bear  the  pun  an  added  grudge. 

(3)  Punning  is   a   parade   of   mental   superiority. 
Every  word  has  a  string  of  connotations,  overtones, 
associations.    As  soon  as  A  and  B,  two  intellectually 
alert  persons,  hear  a  sentence,  their  brains  begin  work- 


The  Lowest  Form  of  Wit  in 

ing  (half  consciously)  among  the  possibilities  pre 
sented.  While  B,  the  less  flexible  mind,  is  still  grop 
ing  among  the  verbal  reflexes,  A  triumphantly  releases 
his  bolt  and  confronts  B  with  his  (B's)  lethargic  and 
generally  inferior  mind.  Hence  B  (representing  the 
majority  of  mankind)  hates  all  that  A  stands  for. 

(4)  Punning  is  a  coarse  commentary  on  .  .  .  But 
let  me  discard  the  categoric  and  impersonal.  This  pre 
view  is,  after  all,  not  so  much  a  general  inquiry  as  a 
fiercely  personal  outcry.  I  am,  I  confess,  a  passionate 
punster.  I  cannot  hear  a  phrase  without  desiring  to 
turn  it  upside  down;  twist  it  about;  wring  its  neck,  if 
necessary.  Can  I  change  the  habit  of  a  lifetime?  Do 
I  want  to?  Even  in  solitude,  I  think  of  queer  verbal 
acrobatics;  my  system  is  a  hot-bed  of  unassimilated 
jeux  d' esprit s.  How  am  I  going  to  get  rid  of  them? 
What  am  I  going  to  do  about  it? 

There  is  the  pun  that  came  to  me  in — of  all  places 
for  intellectual  athletics! — a  book-store.  I  was  think 
ing  about  the  derivative  American  composers — the 
Loefflers,  Carpenters,  et  al — who  keep  poking  and  pry 
ing  in  modern  French  music.  I  want  to  call  them 
American  Debussybodies.  But  do  I  dare? 

There  is  the  mot  in  connection  with  a  roulade  of 
beef  prepared  by  a  famous  chef  for  a  catered  dinner. 
The  Irish  waitress  refuses  to  serve  it  because  she  fa 
vours  Home  Roulade.  I  shall  never  use  that  one. 


112  Five  Previews 

There  is  the  temptation  concerning  the  native  au 
thor  of  "Betelguese."  This  American  epic,  subtitled 
"A  Trip  Through  Hell,"  is  written  in  a  sort  of  home 
spun  terza  rima.  I  want  to  call  the  author  "A  Yankee 
Doodle  Dante."  But  I  have  not  the  courage. 

There  is  the  opportunity  that  presented  itself  in  the 

summer  camp  of  R ,  the  composer.  I  held  that  all 

nature-sounds  not  only  were  musical  but  had  a  tonal 
structure  and  definite  form.  He  denied  it.  "And 
what,"  he  mocked  as  our  controversy  was  interrupted 
by  the  baying  of  our  neighbor's  hounds,  "what  sort  of 
musical  composition  would  you  call  that?"  It  was  on 
the  tip  of  my  tongue  to  reply,  "A  Barkarolle."  But, 
valuing  his  friendship,  I  restrained  myself. 

For  some  time  I  have  wanted  to  speak  of  Beardsley's 
"Pierroticism."  I  want  to  refer  to  Wilde's  mechan 
ically  clever  dialogues  as  "scratchy  records  played  on 
a  creaking  epigramophone."  I  want  to  dismiss  the  gro 
tesque,  heavy-footed  imitations  of  Poe  as  "elephan- 
tastic."  I  want  to  brand  Trotzky's  idea  of  teaching 
the  young  socialists  how  to  shoot  as  "a  poor  piece  of 
Marxmanship."  .  .  .  And  yet  I  never  will. 

Then  there  is  the  tour  de  force  concerning.  .  .  .  But 
you  are  not  listening.  You  have  already  turned  away 
from  my  still-born  puns.  I  understand.  You  are 
thinking  of  one  of  your  own. 


VERSED  AID  TO  THE  INJURED * 

HARPER  GRENVILLE,  Litt.D.,  of  Monrovia,  Liberia, 
has  done  it  again.  The  efficiency  expert  of  modern 
poetry  whose  The  Manufacture  of  Verse  caused  such 
a  technical  sensation  a  year  ago,  has  evolved  some  new 
and  even  more  startling  methods  for  "standardizing 
and  speeding  up  production  of  this  staple  item."  This 
time  Professor  Grenville  turns  directly  to  the  unpub 
lished  versifier  and,  scorning  such  antique  affectations 
as  mood,  inspiration  and  even  talent,  addresses  him 
self  to  "those  who,  unable  to  find  an  audience  or  a  pub 
lisher,  feel  naturally  insulted  and  injured."  A  Manual 
of  Versed  Aid,  or  How  to  Become  A  Practising  Poet  in 
Seven  Lessons,  begins  without  preamble: 

"Often,  dear  reader,  you  have  been  asked  (or  have 
asked  yourself)  why  shouldn't  every  one  write  poetry? 
And  by  that  you  meant  not  unofficial,  amateur  and 
personal  poetry  but  public  or  publishable  verse.  The 
answer  is  absurdly  simple.  Every  one  should — any 
one  can.  To  become  a  successful  contributor  to  maga- 


*A  Manual  of  Versed  Aid;  with  Helpful  Hints  for  the  Young 
Poet.     By  Harper  Grenville,  Litt.D.     Privately  printed. 


114  Five  Previews 

zines  as  divergent  and  'leading'  as  Terrible  Tales  and 
Home  and  Hearthside,  all  one  needs  is  (i)  the  desire 
to  write  and  (2)  patience — and  not  very  much  of  the 
latter.  The  desire  to  write  (and,  I  should  add,  a  casual 
study  of  the  chapters  on  Fixed  Forms  and  Pattern- 
Making)  is  paramount  and  this  Manual  is  designed 
to  give  aid  to  those  who  have,  as  yet,  no  technique, 
ideas,  craftsmanship,  emotions,  purpose  or  any  power 
beyond  that  desire." 

Whereupon  Professor  Grenville,  after  a  somewhat 
too  detailed  consideration  of  the  profits  to  be  derived 
from  following  his  System  of  Simplification,  introduces 
the  unlettered  as  well  as  the  literati  to  the  first  for 
mula  which  he  explains  thus  succinctly:  "Nothing  is 
more  likely  to  prevent  the  salability  of  your  work  than 
the  practise  of  writing  poetry  by  ear.  I  cannot  stress 
too  strongly  the  danger  of  this  habit  which  often  leads 
to  a  perverse  way  of  stating  things,  a  clumsy  differen 
tiation  which  is  commonly  called  originality.  I  would 
advise  precisely  the  opposite  method:  Poetry  by  Eye. 
Do  not  let  yourself  listen  for  novel  chords  and  un 
usual  cadences,  but  observe  closely  the  shape  and 
structure  of  as  much  magazine  verse  as  you  can  read. 
Then  begin  and  write  your  verses  as  close  as  possible 
to  your  models.  I  would  suggest  starting  with  a  Spring 
Song.  Here  is  the  opening  stanza  of  one — the  first 


Versed  Aid  to  the  Injured  115 

effort  of  a  student  who  had  never  written  anything 
but  insurance — which  is  worthy  of  study. 

The  skies  have  lost  their  wintry  gray, 

In  every  tree  the  robins  sing; 
Children  and  lambs  unite  to  play ; 

All  Nature  wakes  and  it  is  Spring. 

"This,  I  submit,  is  practically  perfect.  There  is  not 
a  phrase  here  but  is  as  recognizable  and  classic  as  a 
familiar  melody.  One  knows  it  by  heart  as  soon  as  it 
is  read;  one  can  actually  whistle  it  upon  the  third  repe 
tition.  But  what  is  even  more  to  the  point  is  the 
solidity  of  its  structure.  Every  clause  fits  into  place 
so  neatly  that  the  lines  can  be  read  in  any  order  with 
out  marring  the  music  or  the  meaning.  The  verse  is 
just  as  effective  if  the  penultimate  line  is  followed  by 
the  first,  if  the  second  couplet  precedes  the  initial  one 
or — as  a  final  triumphant  test — if  the  entire  quatrain 
is  begun  backward,  letting  the  lines  follow  haphazardly. 
Thus: 

All  Nature  wakes  and  it  is  Spring. 

Children  and  lambs  unite  to  play ; 

The  skies  have  lost  their  wintry  gray; 
In  every  tree  the  robins  sing! 

"This,"  says  the  canny  instructor,  "is  the  secret: 
keep  to  the  perennial  and  expected  essentials."  And 


Il6  Five  Previews 

in  the  following  chapter  on  Occasional  Sonnets  the 
poetic  pedagogue  reveals  an  even  sharper  and  more 
condensed  simplification.  "To  be  able  to  take  a  poem 
apart  and  put  it  together  in  any  combination  of  lines 
is  the  first  step.  But/'  he  continues,  "it  is  not  enough. 
Study  the  ever-popular  sonnet — especially  the  Memo 
rial  or  Anniversary  Sonnet — as  an  example.  There  is 
a  steady  demand  for  this  article  which,  with  a  little 
diligence,  can  be  supplied  in  quantity.  The  Compos 
ite  Method  is  one  which  makes  the  production  of  this 
pattern  fairly  easy.  But  there  is  an  even  less  tiresome 
system  which  I  have  found  to  yield  still  better  results. 
And  that  is  this:  Take  the  inevitable  phrase  'O  thou 
as  the  impetus  and  starting  point  of  your  sonnet,  choose 
a  series  of  dictionary  rhymes,  place  a  word  or  two  to 
suggest  the  thought  at  the  beginning  of  each  line — 
and  fill  in  the  gaps  at  your  leisure.  It  is  surprising 
how  many  variations  can  be  written  around  such  a 
framework  as: 

TO  


O  thou   birth 

Great    land, 

Stern command 

Wisdom    mirth. 

Noble    worth, 

Future    * planned, 

All  men understand 

Throughout    earth. 


Versed  Aid  to  the  Injured  117 

Inscrutably    designed, 

Glorious   sea  to  sea; 

Foes    blind 

Nations     free — 

Lover    mankind, 

Thy  fame eternity. 


"Another  and  even  speedier  mode  of  composition," 
remarks  the  professor  in  the  section  devoted  to  Noc 
turnes  and  Lullabies,  "is  to  dispense  with  all  words 
except  the  final  one  in  each  line.  Thousands  of  slum 
ber-songs  have  been  written  by  beginning  only  with 
the  indispensable  monosyllable  'Rest,'  jotting  down  a 
set  of  blank  lines  and  letting  the  rhymes  write  them 
selves.  The  possibilities — and  permutations — in  these 
skeleton  structures  are  unlimited.  An  example: 


SUNSET  CROON 


dies, 

west, 

skies, 

Rest. 


calls, 

nest ; 

falls. 

Rest. 


Ii8  Five  Previews 


alarms, 

breast; 

arms, 

Rest. 


love; 

best. 

above — 

Rest." 


It  would  be  a  service  to  consider  Professor  Gren- 
ville's  book  in  microscopic  detail;  there  is  not  a  dull  or 
(in  every  sense  of  the  word)  unprofitable  paragraph  in 
his  250  pages.  But  such  a  consideration  would  de 
generate  into  a  series  of  quotations  punctuated  by  noth 
ing  more  critical  than  applause.  And  yet  the  tempta 
tion  to  quote  is  too  strong  to  resist — particularly  when 
one  reaches  a  section  in  the  chapter  on  The  Diminu 
tive  Lyric.  "This  type  of  lyric,"  proceeds  this  com 
mercial  counsellor,  "is  continually  being  called  for, 
especially  by  the  more  determinedly  feminine  maga 
zines.  Its  chief  characteristics  are  a  clinging  and  cloy 
ing  tenderness  (which,  under  no  circumstance,  must  be 
allowed  to  become  genuinely  poignant),  a  wistful  sen 
timent  that  is  only  distantly  acquainted  with  passion 
and  a  plentiful  use  of  the  word  'little'  and  its  conno 
tations.  An  added  value  is  attained  by  giving  the  last 
line  a  fillip,  a  light  twist  in  the  O.  Henry  manner  (some 


Versed  Aid  to  the  Injured  119 

of  the  lady  specialists  in  this  type  have  been  called 
The  O.  Henriettas)  with  the  suggestion  of  a  sigh.  After 
two  or  three  experiments,  it  will  be  found  that  love 
songs  like  the  following  are  far  easier  to  write  than  not. 

LOVE  IN  APRIL 

The  little  winds  of  April 

Swing  up  the  little  street; 
But  there's  no  spring  within  my  heart, 

No  dancing  in  my  feet. 

The  little  songs  of  April 

Laugh  through  each  little  lane; 

But  I  am  deaf  to  singing  lips 
And  will  not  sing  again. 

The  little  loves  of  April 

Follow  my  steps  .  .  .  But  oh, 

How  can  I  give  my  heart  to  him 
Who  lost  it  long  ago!" 

This  is  a  volume  to  be  treasured  not  only  as  a  piece 
of  research  but  as  a  literary  landmark.  It  marks  the 
end  of  the  mute  Miltons,  the  shamefaced  Shelleys,  the 
silent  Sapphos.  From  now  on,  there  will  be  absolutely 
no  excuse  for  anybody's  absence  from  Anyone's  An 
nual  Anthology  of  Magazine  Verse.  In  the  guise  of 
what  seems  to  be  a  text-book  for  unpublished 


I2O  Five  Previews 

poetasters,  a  great  blow  has  been  struck  for  the  de 
mocracy  of  the  arts.  This  is  the  forerunner  of  a  poetry 
for  the  people,  of  the  people,  by  the  people.  Some 
future  singing  generation  will  erect  odes  and  tablets  to 
Harper  Grenville,  Litt.  D.,  of  Monrovia,  Liberia. 


RHYME  AND  RELATIVITY 1 

IN  spite  of  the  seriousness  with  which  this  collec 
tion  has  been  received,  we  cannot  relinquish  our  sus 
picion  that  the  entire  book  is  a  hoax.  Not  even  Mr. 
Breathweight's  succinct  and  chiselled  sentences  can  de 
ceive  us.  We  are  still  skeptical  when  this  hardy  and 
perennial  anthologist  writes :  "Up  to  the  last  six  months 
it  is  apparent  that  none  of  the  American  poets  have 
realized  how  large  a  part  Einstein  and  the  entire  mat 
ter  of  Relativity  were  playing  in  their  lives,  and  al 
though  we  may  cling  empirically  to  the  tradition  that 
artistic  standards  must  be  imported,  forgetting  that 
the  proverb  de  gustibus  non  disputandum  proves  that 
Europe  has  no  monopoly  of  taste,  in  all  the  poems  I 
have  read  it  is  only  recently  that  I  have  found  this 
most  modern  and  vital  aspect  of  contemporary  life 
rhythmically  as  well  as  idealistically  promulgated  and 
communicated  altogether  adequately  in  direct  propor 
tion  to  the  remarkable  subject  dealt  with." 

We  are  moved  by  such  a  sentence.     But  we  are  not 

1  Rhyme  and  Relativity:  An  Anthology  of  American  Poems 
Apostrophising  the  Theories  of  Einstein.  Collected  and  edited 
by  Warren  Stoddard  Breathweight.  Small,  Little  &  Klein. 

121 


122  Five  Previews 

convinced.  It  seems  incredible — this  communion  of 
poets  lifting  their  voices  in  tuneful  unanimity  on  any 
given  topic,  especially  on  so  abstractly  scientific  a 
theme.  One  is  willing  to  excuse  even  if  one  cannot 
always  follow  the  poets  in  their  flights  through  the 
technical  empyrean;  one  can  understand  their  desire 
to  explore  continually  higher  altitudes.  But  higher 
mathematics — !  Here,  frankly,  we  part  company.  It 
is  our  opinion  that  the  representative  American  poets 
whose  names  (significantly  maimed  by  missing  let 
ters)  embellish  this  collection  have  had  little,  if  any 
thing,  to  do  with  it.  Of  course  we  may  be  mistaken. 
The  Times  vouches  for  the  authenticity  of  the  work 
and  the  publisher  consistently  refuses  to  answer  any 
inquiries,  fearing  that  it  may  cause  undue  publicity. 
In  such  a  situation  all  sides  should  be  heard.  Let  the 
affirmative  speak.  Thus  the  publisher's  paper-jacket: 

"This  is  the  era  of  anthologies.  There  is 
scarcely  an  animal,  school  of  thought,  experiment 
in  technique,  locale  or  topic  of  conversation  that 
has  not  been  made  the  excuse  for  a  collection  of 
verse.  We  have  anthologies  of  songs  by  women, 
songs  for  men,  jingles  for  children;  anthologies 
of  prose  poems,  ghost  poems,  horse  poems,  cat 
poems,  doggerels;  anthologies  of  poems  about  war, 
the  dance,  gardens,  Christianity  and  Kansas. 


Rhyme  and  Relativity  123 

"It  is  all  the  more  amazing  to  realize  that  no 
one  heretofore  has  made  a  timely  collection  of 
poems  inspired  by  the  Einstein  Theory  of  Rela 
tivity.  The  fact  that  there  are,  as  yet,  few  such 
poems  to  be  gathered  is  beside  the  point.  The 
verses  which  have  been  collected  here  call  atten 
tion  to  new  and  profound  impulses  which  are  stir 
ring  this  generation;  they  reflect  such  provocative 
phenomena  as  Relative  Motion,  Substitutes  for 
Gravitation,  The  Michelson-Morley  Experiments, 
Time  as  a  Fourth  Dimension,  Deflected  Light- 
Rays,  non-Euclidean  Warps  in  Space  and  The 
Shifting  of  Spectral  Lines  toward  the  Red." 

Now  the  negative  side.  ...  But  it  occurs  to  us, 
rather  suddenly,  that  we  can  prove  our  point  not  so 
much  by  argument  as  by  quotation.  The  following 
examples,  chosen  more  or  less  haphazardly  from  the 
first  and  least  abstruse  section,  should  support  our 
contention.  We  reprint  them  verbatim  without  fur 
ther  comment  and,  confident  of  the  intelligent  verdict 
of  our  readers,  we  rest  our  case. 


RELATIVITIES 

By  Edw-n  Arlin-ton  Robins-n 

WHAT  wisdom  have  we  that  by  wisdom  all 
Sources  of  knowledge  which  the  years  suggest, 
Hidden  in  rubric,  stone  or  palimpsest, 
Will  turn  and  answer  us  because  we  call? 
About  us  planets  rise  and  systems  fall 
Where,  lost  to  all  but  matter,  Newtons  rest; 
And  who  are  we  to  label  worst  and  best 
While  all  of  force  is  gravitational? 

Held  by  a  four-dimensional  concern, 

He  gropes  among  the  atoms  to  beseech 

A  swifter  sublimation  that  may  reach 

A  little  further  than  the  funeral  urn. 

And  we,  who  always  said  that  we  could  teach, 

Have  nothing  much  to  say  and  more  to  learn. 


125 


GUESSERS 
By  C-rl  Sandb-rg 

OLD  man  Euclid  had  'em  guessing. 

He  let  the  wise  guys  laugh  and  went  his  way. 

Planes,  solids,  rhomboids,  polygons — 

Signs  and  cosines — 

He  had  their  number; 

Even  the  division  of  a  circle's  circumference  by  its 

diameter  never  fazed  him — 
It  was  Pi  to  him. 

Galileo  told  'em  something. 

"You're  nuts,"  they  said,  "you  for  the  padded  cell,  you 

for  the  booby  hatch  and  the  squirrel 

cage." 

"Have  your  laugh,"  he  answered. 
"Have  your  laugh  and  let  it  ride. 

Let  it  ride  ...  for  a  thousand  years 


Newton  let  'em  grin  and  giggle. 
He  smiled  when  they  chuckled,  "Nobody  home," 

126 


Guess ers  127 

He  looked  'em  over 

and  went  on  listening  to  damsons,  lis 
tening  to  autumn  apples  falling  with 
their  "now  you  see  it,  now  you  don't." 

"Maybe,"  is  all  he  told  'em,  "perhaps  is  all  the  an 
swer  .  .  .  perhaps  and  .  .  .  who  knows 
...  in  a  thousand  years." 

And  now,  bo,  here's  this  Einstein; 

Good  for  a  laugh  in  all  the  funny  sections, 

Sure-fire  stuff  in  movies,  comic-operas,  burlesque,  jazz 
parlors,  honky  tonks,  two-a-day. 

Somebody  asks  him  "How  about  Euclid?  .  .  .  Was  he 
all  twisted?  .  .  .  and  is  it  true  your  kink 
in  space  will  put  the  kibosh  on  Coper 
nicus?" 

Einstein  looks  'em  over  and  tells  'em  "Maybe  .  .  . 
and  then  again  .  .  .  perhaps." 

He  says  "The  truth  is  all — supposing  ...  the  truth 
is  all  ...  come  back  and  ask  me  ... 
in  a  thousand  years." 


THE  SAGGING  BOUGH 
By  Rob-rt  Fr-st 

THERE,  where  it  was,  we  never  noticed  how, 
Flirting  its  tail  among  the  smoothed-off  rocks, 

The  brook  would  spray  the  old,  worm-eaten  bough, 
That  squeaked  and  scratched  like  puppies  in  a  box. 

Whether  the  black,  half-rotted  branch  leaned  down, 
Or  seemed  to  lean,  for  love,  or  weariness 

Of  life  too  long  lived  out,  or  hoped  to  drown 
Its  litter  of  last  year's  leaves,  we  could  not  guess. 

Perhaps  the  bough  relaxed  as  though  it  meant 
To  give  its  leaves  their  one  taste  of  depravity; 

Or,  being  near  the  grave  itself,  it  bent 
Because  of  nothing  more  than  gravity. 


128 


THE  TIME-SPACE  JAZZ 

By  Vach-1  Lin-say 


To 


WHEN  Lincoln  was  a  little  boy, 

_      0       .       ,,    ,  i  with    a    touch    of 

In  Springfield,  pomposity: 

Illinois, 

The  land  was  torn  with  slavery  and  dissension. 

Fort  Sumter  had  not  fallen  to  the  foe. 

No  one  would  dare  discuss  the  fourth  dimension. 

"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  came  to  Mrs.  Stowe. 

Commodore  Perry  started  for  Japan. 

The  Whigs  now  dubbed  themselves  "Republican." 

Stephen  A.  Douglas,  called  "The  Little  Giant." 

Brought  fire  and  civil  war  to  bleeding  Kansas. 

John  Brown  and  his  three  sons  became  defiant. 

Whittier  dreamed  and  wrote  his  deathless  stanzas. 

But  though  the  heart  of  truth  was  beating  there, 

Transfusing  all  the  air, 

There  was  no  beauty,  fantasy  or  joy, 

In  Springfield, 

Illinois. 

129 


130  The  Time-Space  Jazz 


And  nOW  tO-day,  Oratoricallv. 

When  Science  holds  its  mighty  sway, 

On  Springfield  corners  and  in  Springfield  streets, 

Where'er  the  village  passion  beats, 

In  lowly  chapels  or  electric  signs, 

The  new  gods  have  their  shrines. 

John  L.  Sullivan  and  old  Walt  Whitman, 

Mark  Twain,  Roosevelt,  Waldo  Emerson, 

Pocahontas  and  Booth  and  Bryan, 

Einstein,  with  prophecies  of  space  and  Zion — 

Their  names  are  spelled  in  characters  of  light, 

Their  names  are  legends; 

Their  names  are  glory; 

Their  names  are  blazoned  on  the  sky  at  night. 

Their  spirits  strengthen  every  blade  of  grass, 

The  lost  souls  rise  and  cheer  them  when  they  pass 

Star-hearted  Lucifer  takes  off  his  hat, 

Saints  so  holy  are  prostrated  flat. 

Daniel  and  his  lions  do  a  ragtime  dance; 

Jazz-jumping  angels  have  to  shout  and  prance. 

Adam  and  Eve  learn  the  snake-dance  there; 

Old  Elisha  does  the  toddle  with  the  bear. 

All  creation  is  a-swaying  to  and  fro — 

Andrew  Jackson  comes  with  Old  Black  Joe, 

Shadrach,  Meshach  and  Abednego.  .  .  . 


The  Time-Space  Jazz  131 

While  the  tune  of  the  spheres  is  a  cosmic  Kallyope. 
Bringing  hope,  bringing  hope,  bringing  hope,  bringing 

hope, 

Singing  joy,  singing  joy,  singing  joy. 
To  every  heart  that  still  may  grope 
In  Springfield, 
Illinois. 


EINSTEIN 
By  Edw-n  Markh-m 

WE  drew  our  circle  that  shut  him  out, 
This  man  of  Science  who  dared  our  doubt, 
But  ah,  with  a  fourth  dimensional  grin, 
He  squared  a  circle  that  took  us  in! 


132 


FROM  "THE  OHM'S  DAY-BOOK" 
By  Edg-r  L-e  Mast-rs — Later  Style 

TAKE  any  spark  you  see  and  study  it; 
It  brightens,  trembles,  spurts  and  then  goes  out. 
The  light  departs  and  leaves,  we  say,  behind — 
Who  knows? 

Succinctly,  then,  great  men  and  little  sparks 
Are  all  the  same  in  some  vast  dynamo 
Of  humming  ether,  ringed  with  unseen  coils. 
Now  here  am  I,  the  smallest  unit  of 
Electrical  resistance.    What  to  me, 
You'd  say,  are  systems  of  coordinates, 
Or  spectral  lines,  or  vibgyor  or  all 
The  Morley-Michelson  experiments? 
Just  this,  the  tiniest  flash  of  energy, 
Started  beyond  the  furthest  reach  of  snace, 
Makes  ripples  that  will  spread  until  the  rings 
Circling  in  that  black  pool  of  time,  will  touch 
All  other  forms  of  energy  and  light. 
Everything  is  related,  all  must  share 
Uncommon  destinies. 

133 


134        From  "The  Ohm's  Day-Book" 

The  problem  is 

To  find  the  hidden  soul,  it's  with  ourselves — 
Within  ourselves,  if  we  know  where  to  look; 
A  fourth  dimension  of  reality. 
But  let  us  take  an  instance:  Some  one's  shot. 
Where?     At  Broadway  and  Forty-second  Street. 
The  placed  is  fixed  by  two  coordinates, 
Crossing  at  sharp  right  angles  in  a  plane, 
But  was  it  on  the  ground  or  in  the  air, 
Below  the  surface  or  the  thirtieth  floor 
Of  that  gray  office-building?     Knowing  this, 
Fixes  the  third  dimension.     But  we  must 
Still  find  a  fourth  to  make  it  definite; 
Concretely,  Time.    If  then  we  trace  the  source 
And,  having  clearly  mapped  what's  physical, 
We  turn  to  instinct,  phototropic  sense, 
And  glimpse  a  moment  through  the  crumbling  veil, 
The  soul,  democracy,  America; 
A  new  Republic.  .  .  . 

(and  so  on  for  357  lines) 


EMPTY  SPACES 
By  Ed-a  St.  Vinc-nt  Mill-y 

LOVE  has  gone  as  water  goes,  lisping  over  gravel, — 
Oh,  I  knew  that  he  was  false,  with  eyes  that  shifted 

so — 

All  that's  free  is  out  of  me,  I  have  no  wish  to  travel; 
How  can  I  remain  here? — and  I  don't  know  where 

to  go. 

What  are  time  and  space  to  me,  mass  or  gravitation; 
My  days  are  all  a  crumbling  smoke,  I  neither  think 

nor  feel. 
Neighbors  knock  and  cousins  mock,  but  life  has  lost 

relation — 
Here  or  there  or  anywhere,  the  world's  no  longer  real. 

Warped  all  out  of  shape  I  am,  burned  away  completely. 
Weeds  are  in   the  lettuce-beds;    I   cannot  mend  or 

bake  .  .  . 
But  it's  an  art  to  have  a  heart  that  breaks  so  well  and 

neatly, 
And  ah,  it's  good  to  have  a  mind  that  laughs  and  lets 

it  break. 

135 


EAST  IS  WEST:  AND  THE  GREAT  WORLD 
SHRINKS 

By  Amy  Low-11 

TLOP— tlop— clatter— clatter!  .  .  .  "Hi  there,  stop! 
What's  the  matter?  Have  you  gone  mad  that  you 
clash  against  the  pages  and  lash  your  verbs  and  nouns 
in  hot  rages  of  sounds?  Zounds !"  cries  the  astounded 
reader,  "Are  there  no  laws  for  such  a  speeder?  Will 
she  never  pause  as  her  sixty-horse  power  Pegasus 
courses  madly  on  the  earth  here  or  the  sky  there? 
.  .  .  Hi,  there !" 

But  the  warning  is  vain.  The  intrepid  rider,  scorn 
ing  conventions,  is  out  of  hearing.  Clearing  the  three 
dimensions  of  space,  her  racer  thunders  sonorously  out 
of  Boston  and  is  lost  in  new  flights  over  Peru.  As 
cending  and  tossed  in  smoke,  it  blunders  through  what 
Mary  Austin  calls  "our  Amerind  folk-lore."  It  soars 
over  the  parched  wall  of  China;  strips  the  starched 
borders  of  eighteenth  century  artifice;  skips  to  the 
balladists1  Middle  Ages;  burns  through  the  pallid  pages 
of  sages  and  returns,  as  unwearied  as  when  it  hastened 
forth,  to  north  of  Brookline  and  Points  Adjacent.  The 
abused  beast  never  trips  although  the  Muse  applies  the 

136 


East  Is  West  137 

whip  remorselessly.  The  strong  horse  flies  as  though 
each  poem  were  a  gruelling  race;  his  headlong  pace  is 
a  gallop,  at  best.  Every  step  is  a  dazzle  of  light;  a 
bright  adventure  in  excitement.  He  is  pressed  on  ... 
and  on.  ...  A  zest  that  crackles  and  knows  no  rest. 

Everything  fares  the  same;  it  shares  this  unrelieved 
tension.  At  the  mention  of  a  name,  of  an  enamel- 
studded  frieze,  budded  fruit  trees  or  flower  gardens — 
everything  suddenly  hardens,  shoots,  flames,  spins, 
turns  and  burns  with  an  almost  savage  intensity.  Na 
ture  seems  to  have  lost  its  usual  stature;  it  becomes  an 
immense  contrapuntal  series  of  frontal  attacks;  an  un- 
relaxed  assault  of  suns  that  clang  like  gongs,  clouds 
that  crash  and  splinter,  boughs  that  clash  and  rouse 
their  roots,  a  lark  that  "shoots  up  like  a  popgun  ball." 
...  It  is  all  rigorously  fortissimo,  enthralling  in  its 
vigor;  appallingly  energetic. 

Musically  alone,  the  tones  of  it  are  full  of  uncanny 
changes.  A  strange  and  unearthly  symphony  is  heard 
here;  queer  tympani  add  their  blows  to  this  polyphonic 
prose.  There  is  the  patter  of  clicking  bones  and  the 
quick,  dry  chatter  of  xylophones,  the  hiss  of  tam 
bourines,  the  cymbals'  shivering  kiss,  the  high  quiver 
of  triangles,  the  clack  and  mutter  of  drum-sticks  tap 
ping  on  slackened  guts. 

And  colors!  Nothing  duller  than  bright  blue,  new 
white,  light  green  of  an  almost  obscene  brilliance;  mil- 


138  East  Is  West 

lions  of  reds  and  purples  that  blaze  and  splutter;  but 
tercup-yellows  and  iris-tinted  fires  that  mellow  the  pol 
ished  sides  of  space.  One  fades,  and  fresh  shades 
spring  up  in  its  place.  Jades — like  the  wings  of  a 
dragonfly  resting  on  young  lily-pads.  Crimson — like 
the  tongue  of  carmine  that  skims  on  the  tips  of  rusty 
peonies.  Lilac — with  the  faint  dust  that  slips  over  the 
wistaria  blossoms.  Silver  as  magnolias  stroked  by 
moonlight,  blue-mauve,  dove-gray,  livid  azaleas,  fire 
ball  dahlias  .  .  .  all  of  them  shouting  their  vivid  prom 
ises.  Let  the  doubting  Thomases  scatter  their  seeds 
of  distrust.  Matter  is  matter.  Who  needs  further  af 
firmation?  Let  the  stars  shatter  themselves,  heedless 
of  gravitation;  there  is  an  end  even  to  infinity. 
Straight  lines  bend  not  only  in  a  poet's  rhymes.  Times 
have  changed.  Science  is  ranged  on  the  side  of  the 
singer  who  has  learned  to  distort  the  widely  assorted 
phenomena  of  life.  Circles  are  no  longer  round.  Sound 
can  be  seen.  Light  can  be  weighed.  Black  is  made 
white;  the  last  have  come  first.  The  worst,  one  thinks, 
may  be  the  best.  East  is  West:  and  the  great  world 
shrinks. 


WIND  GARDENS 
By  "H.  D." 

WHERE  now 

are  time  and  space, 

frailer  than  clove-pinks, 

or  sprays  of  dittany, 

or  citron-flowers  or  myrrh 

from  the  smooth  sides  of  Erymanthus. 

Rigid  and  heavy, 

the  three  dimensions  press  against  us. 

But  what  of  a  fourth? 

Can  myrrh-hyacinths  blossom  within  it, 

or  violets  with  bird-foot  roots; 

can  nereids  lose  themselves 

in  its  watery  forests, 

can  wood-daemons  splash  through  a  surf 

of  silver  saxifrage 

and  dogwood  petals? 

Here  is  no  beauty. 
There  is  no  scent  of  fruit 
nor  sound  of  broken  music, 

139 


Wind  Gardens 

sharp  and  astringent, 

in  this  place. 

For  this  light, 

colder  than  frozen  marble, 

thin  and  constricted, 

is  light  without  heat. 

O  fire,  descend  on  us, 
cut  apart  these  theories; 
shower  us  with  breath  of  pine 
and  freesia  buds. 


THE  DANCE  OF  DUST 
By  Conr-d  Aik-n 

So,  to  begin  with,  ghosts  of  rain  arise 
And  blow  their  muffled  horns  along  the  street  .  .  . 
Who  is  it  wavers  through  this  nebulous  curtain, 
Floating  on  watery  feet? 

Wind  melts  the  walls.    A  heavy  ray  of  starlight, 
Weighed  down  with  languor,  falls.     Black  trumpets 

cry. 

The  dancers  watch  a  murder.     Cool  stars  twinkle. 
In  a  broken  glass,  three  faded  violets  die. 

And  so,  says  Steinlin,  the  dust  dissolves, 
Plots  a  new  curve,  strikes  out  tangentially, 
Builds  its  discordant  music  in  faint  rhythms 
Under  a  softly  crashing  sea. 

"I  am  the  one,"  he  cries,  "who  stumbles  in  twilight, 
I  am  the  one  who  tracks  the  anfractuous  gleam"  .  .  . 
The  futile  lamps  go  out.    The  night  is  a  storm  of  si 
lence.  .  .  . 

What  do  we  wait  for?     Is  it  all  a  dream? 

141 


ADVICE  TO  THE  FOURTH  DIMENSION 
By  Maxw-11  Bod-nheim 

REGION  of  shiftless  equilibrium, 

The  curtly  undulating  worlds 

Weave  insolently  in  your  heart, 

Like  icily-forgotten  tunes  of  atoms. 

Time,  with  a  slanting  hunger,  gropes 

And,  in  a  virginal  precision,  takes  your  hand. 

Circles,  no  longer  arrogantly  round, 

But  like  a  battered  primrose  dripping  flame, 

Are  warps  in  nature. 

No  line  is  straight 

But  lifts  long,  passionless  rhythms  till  it  meets 

Its  parallel  in  drab  exuberance. 

Region  of  shiftless  equilibrium, 
Be  not  concerned  by  tricks  of  time  and  space. 
Only  you  can  twist  an  acrid  meaning  out  of  words 
Or  into  them. 


142 


ROUND 
By  Alfr-d  Kr-ymborg 

WORLDS,  you  must  tell  me — 

What? 

What  is  the  answer  to  it  all? 

Matter. 

Matter,  answer  me — 

What? 

What  are  the  secrets  of  your  strength? 

Molecules. 

Molecules,  be  honest — 

What? 

What  may  be  groping  at  your  roots? 

Atoms. 

Atoms,  I  ask  you — 

What? 

What  have  you  hidden  in  your  hearts? 

Electrons. 

143 


144  Round 

Electrons,  I  charge  you — 

What? 

What  are  you  building  in  your  wombs? 

Worlds. 

Worlds,  you  must  tell  me 


CANZONE 
By  Ezr-  Po-nd 

All'  acquisto  di  gloria  e  di  jama.  .  .  . 
— Early  Italian. 

COME,  my  songs,  distorted,  spoken  against, 

Come,  let  us  pity  those  who  have  one-dimensional 

minds, 
Let  us  pity  those  who  move  smugly 

in  two  or  even  three  dimensions, 
Bound  to  a  relative  mortmain. 

Ma  si  morisse! 

Take  thought  of  the  dull,  the  hopelessly-enmeshed; 
The  young  enslaved  by  the  old, 
The  old  embittered  by  the  young. 

Go,  with  a  clashing  of  many  echoes  and  accents, 
Go  to  Helicon — on  the  Hudson. 
Perform  your  naked  rites,  your  cephalic  dances; 
Shout  your  intolerant  cat-calls  from  the  bus-tops, 
(We  have  kindred  in  common,  Walt  Whitman) 
Parade  your  tag-ends  and  insolences, 
Cry  them  on  State  Street: 
Ch'e  be'a.  .  .  .* 

*  Bella. 

145 


146  Canzone 

Take  no  thought  of  being  presentable. 
Lest  they  say  you  grow  shabby, 
I  shall  find  fresh  raiment  for  you 

out  of  time  and  spaciousness; 

A  shirt  out  of  Provence,  green  slippers  from  Cathay, 
Assorted  mantles,  slightly  worse  for  wear,  from  Mont- 

parnasse, 

And  fillets,  somewhat  dusty,  out  of  Ithaca. 
Who  shall  say  you  have  become 
A  slave  to  your  technique 

like  Chloris,  who  would  flirt 
Even  with  her  own  shadow? 
Who  proclaims  this? 

B-a-a-a-a-amen. 


EINSTEIN  AMONG  THE  COFFEE-CUPS 
By  T.  S.  Eli-t 

DEFLECTIVE  rhythm  under  seas 

Where  Sappho  tuned  the  snarling  air; 

A  shifting  of  the  spectral  lines 
Grown  red  with  gravity  and  wear. 

New  systems  of  coordinates 
Disturb  the  Sunday  table-cloth. 

Celestine  yawns.     Sir  Oliver 
Hints  of  the  jaguar  and  sloth. 

A  chord  of  the  eleventh  shrieks 

And  slips  beyond  the  portico. 
The  night  contracts.    A  warp  in  space 

Has  rumors  of  Correggio. 

Lights.    Mrs.  Blumenthal  expands; 

Diaphragm  and  diastole. 
The  rector  brightens.    Tea  is  served; 

Euclid  supplanted  by  the  sole. 


147 


LOVE'S  RELATIVITY 
By  S-ra  Teasd-le 

THE  moon  is  in  love  with  the  nightingale, 
And  the  nightingale  worships  the  rose; 

But  the  red  rose  bleeds  for  the  young  and  pale 
Queen  of  the  garden  close. 

The  young  queen  turns  to  a  singing  clown 

Whose  lips  have  a  single  tune; 
She  leans  to  him  like  a  ray  bent  down. 

But  he  is  in  love  with  the  moon. 


148 


THE  NEW  ATOM 
By  Lou-s  Unterm-yer 

AND  suddenly  analysis 

Grows  futile;  thought  and  language  rasp. 
And  all  dimensions  are  contained  in  this 

One  restless  body  that  I  clasp. 

Atoms  disintegrate  while  drums 

Beat  their  red  lightnings  through  each  vein. 
Each  angry  crowded  molecule  becomes 

A  world,  a  bleeding  battle-plain. 

A  thousand  orbits  twist  and  glow, 
The  flesh  reveals  its  secret  den.  .  .  . 

And  so  (in  rhyme)  I  leave  the  earth,  and  so 
I  come  to  your  white  breast  again. 


149 


THE  SPELL  OF  THE  ELECTRON 
By  Rob-rt  W.  Serv-ce 

Now  this  is  the  spell  the  philosophers  tell 

When  you're  puzzled  by  all  their  revisions: 
The  laws  that  we  knew  are  not  always  true, 

We  must  change  them  to  suit  the  conditions. 
Though  you  roar  as  you  eat  only  red-blooded  meat 

And  thrill  with  each  virile  sensation, 
No  atom  or  ape,  no  figure  or  shape, 

By  God!  can  escape  gravitation. 

For  this  is  the  lesson  of  Einstein; 

Answer  Death's  grin  with  a  scoff. 
Glaring  and  tearing  at  all  you  resent, 
Fight  though  the  light  is  battered  and  bent — 

Fight  till  the  flesh  drops  off! 

You  may  clench  your  fists  at  the  scientists, 

At  calculus,  cubes  or  quadratics; 
You  may  curse  and  thrash  since  the  old  laws  clash 

With  relativist  kinematics; 
You  may  goad  your  sides  till  the  blood-red  tides 

Run  off  and  the  dry  bones  clatter — 
150 


The  Spell  of  the  Electron 

At  the  end  of  the  grind  with  a  reeling  mind, 
By  God!  you  will  find  only  matter! 


For  this  is  the  lesson  of  Einstein; 

Drink  at  no  coward's  trough. 
Sneering  and  jeering  will  bring  no  delight; 
You're  here  to  make  everything  cheerful  and  bright 
And  for  carfare  and  comfort  and  sweetness  and  light, 

Fight  till  the  flesh  drops  off! 


INDEX  OF  VICTIMS 

Aiken,  Conrad,  141.  Markham,  Edwin,  132. 

Anderson,  Sherwood,  70-72.      Masters,  Edgar  Lee,  133-4. 

Mencken,  H.  L.,  75-80,  108. 
Bodenheim,  Maxwell,   142.       Millay,    Edna    St.    Vincent, 

135- 

Cabell,  James  Branch,  49-60.     Moore,  George,  31-43- 
Chesterton,  G.  K.,  7-17. 


Oppenheim,  James,  92. 
Pound,  Ezra,  145-6. 
Robinson,  E.  A.,  125. 


Dell,  Floyd,  74-75- 

Eliot,  T.  S.,  147- 

Frost,  Robert,   128. 

Gale,  Zona,  72-74. 

"H.  D.",  139-140. 

Kreymborg,  Alfred,  143-4-         Teasdale,  Sara,  148. 


Sandburg,  Carl,  93-94,  126-7. 
Scollard,  Clinton,  101. 
Service,  Robert  W.,  150-1. 


Lewis,  Sinclair,  63-75. 

Lindsay,  Vachel,  88-90,  129-     Untermeyer,  Louis,  149- 

131- 

Lowell,    Amy,    91-92,    136-     Watson,  William,  104. 
138.  Wells,  H.  G.,  19-29. 


153 


BY  LOUIS  UNTERMEYER 

INCLUDING  HORACE 

(Second  Printing.    $1.60  net) 

This  volume  of  parodies  comes  by  its  name  honestly.  For, 
though  it  is  supposed  to  be  a  series  of  paraphrases  of  the  odes 
of  Horace,  more  than  thirty  other  poets — ancient  and  modern — 
appear  in  it.  The  serious  poet  turns  juggler  here;  balancing 
Horace  while  keeping  one  theme,  two  methods  and  a  score  of 
schools  in  the  air. 

"Untermeyer  is  not  merely  a  clever  rhymester;  he  is  a  pene 
trating  critic — and  here  he  operates  upon  the  poets  without 
anaesthetics,  burlesquing  every  shade  of  their  manner  and  ex 
posing  their  smallest  mannerisms  with  joyful  ferocity.  .  .  . 
The  man's  extraordinary  technical  skill  has  taken  him  round  the 
whole  field  of  verse-making.  In  brief,  the  book  is  a  tour  de 
force  of  devastating  humor — a  truly  impressive  exhibition  of 
virtuosity." — H.  L.  Mencken  in  The  Baltimore  Sun. 

"  'Including  Horace '  is  much  more  than  clever ;  it  touches 
actual  inspiration  at  points.  The  odes  are  translated  with  a 
wealth  of  racy  idiom  and  a  profusion  of  adroit  rhyme.  .  .  . 
This  is  workmanship  of  a  delicate  and  distinguished  sort." — 
Pittsburgh  Press. 

"Horace  has  never — not  even  by  Eugene  Field  or  Franklin  P. 
Adams — been  more  vivaciously  echoed.  The  book  is  rich  in 
brilliant  work  and  excellent  fun." — Christopher  Morley  in  The 
N.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

"Mr.  Untermeyer  is  one  of  the  severest  taskmasters  that  the 
world  of  poetry  knows.  All  the  more  extraordinary,  then,  that 
a  poet-critic  who  takes  things  so  seriously  can  turn  aside  and 
write  the  cleverest  parodies  of  any  one  in  the  ring." — The 
Bookman. 

"Mr.  Untermeyer  is  a  master  of  parody." — The  N.  Y.  Times. 

HARCOURT,    BRACE    AND    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


BY  LOUIS  UNTERMEYER 

THE  NEW  ADAM 

(Second  Printing.    $1.75  net) 

"Louis  Untermeyer  is  the  most  versatile  writer  in  America,  of 
that  there  can  be  no  shadow  of  a  doubt.  But  he  is  more — he  is 
one  of  the  small  band  of  young  writers  who  are  slowly  shaping 
our  literature  into  a  new  era." — Amy  Lowell  in  The  New  York 
Times. 

'There  is  in  this  recent  work  of  Mr.  Untermeyer's  a  note  that 
is  singular  in  American  poetry.  It  shows  a  writer  who  is  curious 
about  the  soul.  .  .  .  Here  is  love  expressed  in  modern  fashion. 
The  old  veils  have  been  stripped  from  it  and  a  new  Adam  cries 
out  before  the  reader." — Herbert  S.  Gorman  in  The  Freeman. 

"The  calm  irony,  and  the  passion  that  runs  like  lightning 
through  'The  New  Adam.'  .  .  .  The  ecstatic  agony  of  'Free,'  the 
simplicity  of  'Walls  Against  Eden'  could  hardly  have  been 
written  before  the  twentieth  century.  This  new  Adam  is  strug 
gling  fiercely,  intensely,  to  regain  'a  late  and  larger  Paradise.' " — 
Babette  Deutsch  in  The  Literary  Review. 

"Sometimes  it  is  an  angry  protest;  sometimes  a  tribute  of 
child-like  gratitude  to  her  bodily  sweetness ;  sometimes  a  piece 
of  ironic  mockery  at  their  failure  to  make  two  selfish  wishes 
meet  in  one  perfection.  But  always  it  is  a  real  emotion  that  is 
dealt  with — always  a  reflection  of  an  experience  that  can  recog 
nizably  be  found  in  the  life  of  any  mortal  lover." — Floyd  Dell 
in  The  Bookman. 


CHALLENGE 

(Fifth  Printing.    $1.50  net) 

"He  is  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  social  revolt,  but  he  does  not 
lose  his  head  in  it.  And,  except  for  Masefield,  we  know  no 
other  poet  of  late  years  in  whom  is  so  strikingly  revealed  the 
magic  power  of  rhyme  and  rhythm  to  set  thought  on  fire." — 
N.  Y.  Tribune. 

"Love  and  democracy  are  his  favorite  themes,  and  few  living 
poets  are  worthier  to  sing  them." — The  Literary  Digest. 

HARCOURT,    BRACE    AND    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


BY  LOUIS  UNTERMEYER 

MODERN  AMERICAN  POETRY 

(Revised  and  Enlarged  Edition.    $2.00  net) 

A  new  printing  of  a  collection  which  has  grown  from  178  to 
410  pages,  which  includes  almost  100  poets  with  examples  of  their 
best  work  and  critical  as  well  as  biographical  introductions. 

"This  anthology  is  the  most  intelligible  introduction  to  the 
poetry  of  the  United  States  since  the  Civil  War." — The  London 
Times  Literary  Supplement. 

"Mr.  Untermeyer  has  been  in  much  the  same  position  toward 
American  poetry  as  Mr.  Mencken  has  taken  toward  American 
prose.  .  .  .  Mr.  Mencken  has  been  more  prolific.  But  he  has 
never  done  anything  more  valuable  for  American  literature  than 
has  been  done  by  Mr.  Untermeyer  in  preparing  these  latest  col 
lections.  They  probably  represent  the  furthest  development  in 
this  country  of  this  type  of  publication." — Stirling  Bowen  in 
Detroit  News. 

"The  most  unusual  part  of  Mr.  Untermeyer's  book  is  perhaps 
the  biographical  sketches  with  which  he  has  prefaced  his  selec 
tions  from  each  author." — The  Observer  (England). 

"A  guide  to  the  best  new  poetry  of  America." — Seattle  Post 
Intelligence. 

MODERN  BRITISH  POETRY 

(Fifth  Printing.    $2.00  net) 

Almost  two  hundred  poems  from  Henley  and  Housman  through 
Brooke  and  Masefield  to  the  youngest  of  the  Georgians. 

"This  survey  of  British  verse  from  1870  to  1920  is  a  brilliant 
achievement.  Critique,  handbook,  bibliography — it  is  anything 
but  an  anthology.  If  we  must  have  anthologies,  let  us  have  them 
all  like  this  one!  .  .  .  Here  is  a  collection  of  poems  so  edited 
that  it  is  possible  for  a  layman  to  sit  down,  read  straight  through 
and  arise  from  the  arm-chair  with  a  grateful  sense  of  knowledge 
swiftly  and  easily  gained." — The  Literary  Review  (N.  Y.  Post). 

"His  introduction  is  the  best  cursory  sketch  of  the  progress  of 
English  poetry  that  has  appeared  since  1870." — The  N.  Y.  Times. 

HARCOURT,    BRACE    AND    COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


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